FORE Partnership gets Patagonia status with B Corp certification
Ethical investor and developer FORE Partnership has become one of a select group of UK real estate firms to become a B Corporation.
As a B Corp, FORE has had to legally commit to pursuing purpose beyond profit.
B Lab, which administers the B Corp certification, demands that businesses have an explicit social or environmental mission and a legally binding fiduciary responsibility to take into account the interests of workers, the community and the environment as well as its shareholders. A company must also amend its articles of incorporation to adopt B Lab’s commitment to sustainability and treating workers well.
Ethical investor and developer FORE Partnership has become one of a select group of UK real estate firms to become a B Corporation.
As a B Corp, FORE has had to legally commit to pursuing purpose beyond profit.
B Lab, which administers the B Corp certification, demands that businesses have an explicit social or environmental mission and a legally binding fiduciary responsibility to take into account the interests of workers, the community and the environment as well as its shareholders. A company must also amend its articles of incorporation to adopt B Lab’s commitment to sustainability and treating workers well.
Just a handful of UK real estate businesses have the certification, including Igloo Regeneration, Bridges Fund Management, Joseph Homes and Newcore Capital.
FORE managing partner Basil Demeroutis said getting the certification was the continuation of its ongoing journey as an ethical investor.
“Ever since we set up the business nearly a decade ago, our vision has been to achieve higher investment returns in real estate by supercharging positive social and environmental change,” he said. “Becoming an officially certified B Corporation underlines our own mission to align our purpose, impact, culture and brand. We’ve codified our values in our own corporate governance and made binding commitments to consider the impact of our decisions on our staff, customers, suppliers, community and environment.”
“Property is the stage on which many of our greatest challenges as a society play out, yet has not worked hard enough to solve them,” added Demeroutis. “Now more than ever we have to recognise our role as a critical part of the urban system and to drive system-level transformation in order to achieve a just, low-carbon, socially inclusive built environment. This surely must be the future of real estate.”
Demeroutis said he hoped that a general move among business to a more moral way of operating would see more firms look to become B Corps, or at least follow the principles of the movement.
“Companies of the future are either going to operate in this way or they won’t exist,” said Demeroutis. “You are either moving in that direction, or you will get left behind.”
There are currently around 360 B Corps in the UK and some 3,500 globally, including popular brands such as Patagonia, Body Shop and Innocent.
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