Sustainability at Little Square Capital

Little Square Capital is committed to sustainable economic and social development through our business, processes and communities. Little Square Capital acts in accordance with the United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGPs), the International Labor Organization (ILO) standards, and the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) Principles, and is guided by these international treaties to assess the behaviour of companies and prospects.

Our team aspires to support change-makers in our markets, to enable them to transform lives and create prosperous communities. We want Little Square Capital to make it possible for business starters to achieve their financial goals. We'd like to work with rational people who believe they can change the world for the better.

But at the same time, Little Square Capital believes that some products, services and business practices are detrimental to society, and will exclude doing business with entities that are involved in such actions.

Governance encompasses the systems which contain the principles upon which governing entities are established, organised, directed, and controlled. For countries, the Constitution should contain the principles of the establishment of governments, the mechanisms, structures, and processes for decision making, rules of accountability, control and allowed behaviours of the executive.

Businesses face pressure from customers, employees, investors, and partners to show good governance, to demonstrate their accountability to all stakeholders. On the one hand, there is a need for a universally accepted set of reliable, comprehensive, and robust sustainability standards, for interoperability of standards. Equally though, it is likely that new rules will likely NOT be set universally, or serve everyone equally well, but rather likely will sustain the positions of incumbents.

Interoperability should not just be about standards working together, but about leveraging the diversity of stakeholders, expertise, coverage, and approaches of the individual standards to create a more responsible business environment.

The Sustainability and Impact Strategy Committee (SISC) of Little Square Capital decides on the implementation of any changes to our exclusion policy. The SISC also has the final say on inclusion or exclusion from our Exclusion List.

We engage positively with our clients and are committed to respecting and encouraging their ethical performance. Our Position Statement defines our financing criteria and minimum standards, covering our current and future clients. We focus on working with industries that have a high potential social and environmental impact. We require our clients to meet these minimum standards and to achieve even higher levels of performance where possible.

Our aim is to:

• encourage strategic thinking on the ethics of investment,

• provide a high-quality financial service to our customers,

• participate in a transparent and ethical way in all our engagements,

• deliver our services with consistency and integrity at all times.

Sustainability is about walking the talk, it is about action, getting things done, about implementation. We work with a carefully selected group of clients, across an array of industries, that seek to drive positive social and financial impact and support sustainable development goals. And we're not talking about signatories that pay lip service to the goals, with targets dependent on unrealistic developments and unproven technologies. We support entrepreneurs who work at the heart of their local economies to sustainably grow their business in an efficient and inclusive manner.

Little Square Capital advocates sustainable investing and financing. We want to avoid dealing with clients that our shareholders and stakeholders deem unsuitable. If prospects do not meet the standards set in our Position Statements, we will avoid any interactions or transactions. We will exit relationships with our clients if their situations change and they show insufficient progress or intent to meet the standards.

We empower employees to challenge and define our policies through ongoing engagement. We evaluate and inform our actions with reference to sustainability risks along with external metrics of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risks in the context of the businesses we work with. We publish the names of every company we work with, in line with our core values of integrity, sustainability and transparency.

Industry associations have shown a willingness to go to great lengths to set their own standards and disclosure rules and are likely to bear some influence on any future government regulation. We will continue to work with industry through engagement with firms, but will exclude engaging with any firms where we believe products and services cannot be changed by engagement, or adherence to the UN Global Compact principles is severely lacking.

Little Square Capital maintains a list of companies and countries it excludes and those under review. General updates will be done semi-annually and published on our website (please note interim changes might occur).

We believe in setting high standards for sustainable business and use the International Labor Organization (ILO) standards, United Nations Guiding Principles (UNGPs), and United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) Principles to inform our actions. We set strict targets for sustainability across our People, Environment, Conduct and Technology, to accelerate collaboration across the sectors and communities in which we operate.

We embed sustainability in our team, our business and our processes to deliver sustainable prosperity to our communities, in line with our values. Our focus is on identifying the ideal solution for clients in the context of sustainable outcomes for society and helping them reach their goals.

With regard to counterparties, Little Square Capital will follow applicable sanctions of the UK, UN, EU and the US to which it is subject, and any mandatory (financing and investment) restrictions deriving therefrom.

We are committed to sustainable economic and social development through our business, processes and communities. Sustainability requires measurement, disclosure, and accountability to internal and external stakeholders, with the view to drive organisational performance towards the goal of considering all stakeholders. 

We might refine our approach toward relevant Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues in response to regulatory changes, but will remain true to our core founding principles; to help build the economic foundations of a fair and prosperous world.