We focus on attractive companies with the potential – through engagement aligned with the UN SDGs – to generate outcomes that benefit people, the planet and investors.
The SDGs provide an ideal framework for engaging to create more impactful and financially successful companies.
Engaging for positive outcomes by aligning corporate outputs with the SDGs, rather than investing in already impactful businesses.
As experienced stock-pickers, we have a strong 30-year track record in small- and mid-cap equities – an asset class ripe for improvement through engagement.
Committed to responsible investment since 1983, we have a large team skilled in face-to-face engagement with corporate executives and directors.
The Strategy aims to generate attractive investment returns and positive social and environmental impacts – particularly in emerging markets – through engagements focused on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs are an ambitious, universal set of objectives agreed by UN member states. We believe that there are compelling opportunities to create such change and long-term value among small- and mid-cap businesses, many of which are not typical engagement targets of either shareholders or NGOs, yet whose operations and supply chains provide rich potential for improvement and the direct access required for successful engagement.
The SDGs are a universal set of goals, targets and indicators for global development. They serve as a blueprint for significantly changing the world — by ending global poverty, safeguarding the planet and aiming for prosperity for all — by 2030. Established by the UN in September 2015, the SDGs were adopted by the international community, including 193 governments.
There are 17 SDGs, and within these goals there are 169 targets and 230 indicators, which seek to realise the human rights of all and achieve gender equality, among other issues. They are integrated and indivisible and balance three primary dimensions of sustainable development: the economic, social and environmental. To achieve these goals, it is estimated that it will require investment of between $5-7tn each year until 2030. Approximately $1tn comes from public funds from the UN and member countries annually, while private capital must fund the remaining $6tn annually.1
Hamish Galpin
Director, Head of Small & Mid Cap, Lead Manager of Global Small Cap
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Hamish is the Head of the Small & Mid Cap team, which he has led since its creation in 2007. He has been at Hermes since 1995, when he joined as co-manager of the UK smaller companies strategies; he served as lead manager from January 1997 to April 2010. Since the founding of the team, Hamish has gradually assumed a more global perspective, with oversight of the holdings across all of the team's strategies, and he is now lead manager of the Global Small Cap strategy. He has a background in credit, having started his career in the energy and natural resources division of NatWest Bank, and later moving to Bankers Trust as a credit analyst covering European corporates. He has a BEng (Hons) in Civil Engineering from Nottingham University and is a former director of the Hermes Group (DB) pension scheme. Hamish also sits on the Hermes Governance Group, which monitors the Hermes (DC) pension scheme.
Will Pomroy
Lead Engager
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Will joined Hermes in 2015 and, in addition to overseeing and leading the engagement programme for the SDG Engagement Fund, provides ESG analysis for and engagement with stocks in the firm’s small- and mid-cap strategies. He chairs the Corporate Governance Expert Group of the Quoted Companies Alliance and is a member of the Corporate Governance Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales. Will holds an MSc in Public Policy and Management from Birkbeck College at the University of London and a BSc (Hons) in Forensic Science from the University of West of England.
