Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100
- 101)
TUESDAY 15 MAY 2007
MR DAVID
CLARK, MR
MALCOLM HAYDAY,
MR JOHN
GOODFELLOW AND
MS GILL
DAVIDSON
Q100 Mr Love: Can I ask the Charity
Bank—and it comes back to this issue about the balance of
the way the way that the money is used, following on from the
point that the Chairman has just made—often people who will
want to access funding in some form will be considered by the
organisation not to have the capacity to do that and therefore
they may be rejected. To what extent will they team up with that
end of the organisation that is providing grants to fill the capacity
to ensure the smooth transfer from an organisation that is not
capable to one that is capable, to one that can then give, and
what would be the balance of funding between the two? If you do
what George is suggesting, spend more money in deprived areas,
will that not shift the balance from lending or giving money to
help them to capacity building?
Mr Hayday: Initially because of
the need, if you like, to develop the market place there would
probably be a disproportionate emphasis on capacity building and
grant maker, but what we are beginning to see in the voluntary
sector already are grant makers, lenders, venture capitalists
working together to prepare mixed funding packages to meet the
various levels of risk inherent in many of these operations, and
I think uniquely in a way that this moment of time with the unclaimed
assets enables us to put some real weight behind that type of
mixed economy of funding.
Q101 Mr Mudie: Triodos say that the
market is already there for this capacity building—the market
is already there, players like yourself are there. Is the Social
Investment Bank just coming into a market that is already being
served and unnecessarily.
Mr Hayday: Chairman, realistically
we are talking about something that probably is not going to see
the light of day for another two or three years by the time that
legislation and everything has been enacted. At that point I would
see a market place that is going to be in very real need of wholesaling
capacity and therefore I think we must plan now for a social investment
bank that will actually be operational in two, three, maybe four
years' time, at which point many of the organisations that started
three, four, five years ago, will be in need of recapitalising
as they go to the next stage of development. The danger is that
we leave it for three or four years and then find that when we
most need it it is too late.
Mr Clark: Chairman, I think that
relates partly to your question concerning amount and size and
how big, in that the social investment bank would be looking at
a different set of objectives in that sense, and the bank that
we are managing, Charity Bank, is a deposit taker as well and
there are other charitable missions with that. So it would not
be moving into the same market space. What we would see is us
working with a separate investment bank to create the sort of
package that Malcolm is talking about.
Chairman: Can I thank you for your written
submission and your evidence to us this morning; it has been very
helpful to us.
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