Introducing Our Business Responsibility Taking stock During the reporting period, we thought afresh about sustainability and our obligations in this regard. We had spent the past several months observing international developments, where momentum relating to climate change, especially, had grown, and where businesses, selectively, had begun to vocalise a response. We had also noted the changing economic dynamics relating to sustainability matters. The emergence of ethical consumerism, for instance, coincided with a greater effort by business to embrace the opportunities, and risks, associated with first-mover advantage in the largely unexplored commercial territory represented by the environment. We recognised that the time for prevaricating on the issue of environmental sustainability was fast coming to an end. Since we had previously regarded sustainability in the non-financial sense as being almost exclusively synonymous with corporate social investment, we knew that in tackling sustainability afresh, we had to return to first principles. Consequently, we revisited who we are and what our core purpose is. Greater clarity on this would foster the subsequent evolution of a more considered, concerted approach on how to take sustainability forward within Investec. Our historic approach Sustainability has, however, always been a focus for us. Our grasp of how to manage our operating environment and ensure sustained financial success is indicated by our substantial efforts in recent years towards: • Creating a balanced portfolio of businesses. • Attaining our financial objectives. • Maintaining strongly entrenched internal practices of corporate governance, risk management and people development. We have also understood equally well the importance of giving back to the communities in which we operate. Our traditional focus on non-financial issues has tended to be driven out of our home base in South Africa and concentrated on the backlog of socio- economic needs in the country. Our social investment activities take into account the desire to do the right thing and adopt an entrepreneurial approach, and include groundbreaking work on CIDA City Campus and The Business Place, which has won us many accolades, and Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) in South Africa. We were the first bank in South Africa to effect change at an ownership level, before the Financial Sector Charter came into being. We have also become a recognised leader in the identification, financing, creation and replication of BEE platforms. For our non-South African businesses, sustainability has tended to concentrate on the need to grow, build critical mass and ensure the successful integration of businesses acquired. A sustainability mindset beyond the financial has not really had the chance to be developed. This makes it all the more gratifying that our UK business last year, despite the absence of a formalised group approach, won the prestigious City of London prize for best of breed practices in the field of waste management. Moving forward In considering what sustainability means for Investec, we recognise that we have already accomplished a lot. The missing element, however, is the environment, which we have only flirted with in the past. The time for a greater focus seemed appropriate. Our international businesses had grown sufficiently to be able to think more broadly about sustainability. These businesses were also urging the importance of environmental considerations as, outside South Africa, environmental sustainability has become the prevailing political mantra. When considering our core purpose, we factored in the potential for banks to unlock finance to assist in providing answers to the world's pressing problems, as well as our own ability to be entrepreneurial, add value and unlock potential. We factored in our own track record of going for the gap, and sought to identify whether a more integrated sustainability approach might allow us to do so again. Finally, however, we agreed that our mandate is best represented by our desire to create sustained wealth for shareholders and stakeholders, and to use our entrepreneurial skills base to foster, finance and reproduce these skills in others. We identified that: • We are not in the market for virtue, for virtue's sake. • There are abundant different facets to sustainability, all diverse and manifold, which we probably cannot tackle equally, or all at once. • We would rather leverage our existing skills base to be a force for good, since this had already underpinned our financial sustainability for so long. We then identified the key national priorities for each of our principal geographies. As clear areas of commonality existed across our international businesses, we were able to devise an overall sustainability philosophy for the group. How far did we agree we were prepared to go in our sustainability approach? In determining the scope of our endeavours, should we just do the basics (meet legal and compliance requirements), go the extra mile (more than merely ticking the box) or seek to exert leadership (influence prevailing thinking)?