Committee Nominates GIB Special Shareholder Trustees

An independent nominations committee has nominated five trustees to run the Green Purposes Company Ltd (GPC), a newly incorporated organisation tasked with keeping the UK Green Investment Bank plc (GIB) green.

In February 2016, the UK Government announced that GIB would create a ‘special share’ as part of the process to introduce private capital to the organisation.

As part of the process, GIB will, upon transfer of its ownership from the UK Government to new owners, issue the special share in the organisation to be held by GPC.

The purpose of the special share is to give its holder special voting powers to ensure that GIB remains permanently under a legally enforceable obligation to invest exclusively in accordance with its green purposes, as current set out in the objects of its Articles of Association, GIB said.

The selection of the trustees is the responsibility of the nominations committee, with no involvement from either GIB or any part of government or the UK public sector.

The nominated trustees are James Curran MBE, former CEO of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and currently a non-executive member of the Scottish Government’s Climate Change Delivery Board; Trevor Hutchings, Director of Advocacy at WWF; Tushita Ranchan, a board member of London Array offshore wind farm; Lord Robin Teverson; Member of the House of Lords and Chair of the Lords’ EU select committee on energy and environment; and Peter Young; founding Director and former Chair of Aldersgate Group.

The special share will be issued to GPC at the point at which ownership of GIB is transferred from the UK Government to a new owner. The nominated trustees will be formally appointed to their role by that point.