Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group plans to invest $25 million in Affirmative Investment Management, media reports said. Affirmative Investment Management is one of the world’s leading impact bond investment managers.
With that, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group will become the first Japanese lender to partner with the British asset manager in ESG bond investments. The bank is Japan’s second-largest lender by assets. It will invest $20 million in the asset manager and the remaining $5 million over the next five years. However, the second set of investment will largely depend on Affirmative Investment Management’s performance.
It is reported that Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group will own 24.9 percent of Affirmative Investment Management’s total shares, or 4.9 percent stake in the company’s voting rights.
Last month, the Japanese lender joined the Open Invention Network, which is the largest patent non-aggression community ever. Keith Bergelt, CEO of Open Invention Network, said in a statement, “The financial services and fintech industries are increasingly relying on open source technologies, including blockchain technologies such as Hyperledger. Global leaders that recognize the benefits of open source technologies are building robust feature-rich platforms to make them more effective for commercial and consumer clients. We are pleased that SMFG has joined our community and committed to patent non-aggression in Linux and adjacent open source technologies.”