Environment

Offering innovative skills through a partnership that reflects our commitment to the environment

To materialise the commitment of Baron and Baroness Benjamin de Rothschild and CBR to preserving the environment, we have taken a majority stake in BeCitizen, a first-tier French environmental strategy consultancy.

BeCitizen

BeCitizen advises companies on their strategies for handling the major challenges of energy, climate change, resources and waste, health and toxicity, and biodiversity.

Each team of BeCitizen experts covers a specific sector of the environment. Their close work with industry and suppliers of technology allow them to keep a close eye on market trends, technological developments and opportunities.

BeCitizen assesses companies on the basis of « Positive Economy »™ criteria of energy, climate change, health and toxicity, resources and waste, which reflect their ability to generate economic growth that restores environmental capital.

A unique pooling of environmental and financial skills

The combination of our financial expertise with BeCitizen’s environmental and industrial expertise allows us to offer our clients an optimum synergy of talents and the opportunity of dealing with a single service provider.

Through this partnership, we advise our clients on their strategy based on the principles of « Positive Economy »™, as well as structuring of listed and private equity environment funds.

< Risk Management

< Asset Management

< Currency Overlay

< Structuring Products

< Corporate Advisory Services

< Environment

< « Positive Economy »™ strategic advisory

< Designing private equity funds

< Positive Economy™ Edmond de Rothschild Funds (PEERF)

< Family Advisory

< Group Businesses...

News

12/31/2009 | Environment

La Compagnie Benjamin de Rothschild, supporting responsible property investment

As part of its ongoing commitment to the environment and its membership of the UNEP FI, Compagnie Benjamin de Rothschild (CBR) has joined the UNEP FI working group on responsible investment in property.

Positive Economy™

Through our work with BeCitizen, a first-tier environmental strategy consultancy, we apply « Positive Economy »™ principles to our various activities.

« Positive Economy »™ is a concept developed by BeCitizen, whose purpose is to generate economic growth that restores environmental capital, i.e., the environment’s ability to provide resources and services to the economy. The implementation of Positive Economy™ improves the balances of each company and each local government – keeping in mind that global balances are based on lifecycle analysis that take all inputs and outputs into account in products and processes.

With the global economy in full flux, the companies that endure will be those who have adapted to emerging market forces and have transformed risks into opportunities.

BeCitizen applies this principle to five key issues, which represent both risks to growth and opportunities for growth :

Energy :

Companies, buildings, infrastructures and local governments can become energy-positive by generating power through biofuels, recovered heat and electricity that they can then sell to other economic entities.

Climate change :

Companies and local governments can become not just carbon-neutral, but carbon-negative, thus generating value in the form of emission permits that can be traded on voluntary or regulated markets.

Resources and waste :

Economic actors who were net consumers yesterday can become net producers tomorrow, with positive balances for water, soil and matter. Resources, which had been a cost item, can become a revenue item for companies that are able, for example, to recycle waste and supply clean water to the local community.

Biodiversity :

Economic activities can promote biodiversity. Companies and local governments can roll out solutions to cut costs and risks incurred by the loss of biodiversity and to foster greater biodiversity.

Health and toxicity :

Economic activities that once generated pollution will generate a positive health / toxicity balance. The houses, cars and factories of tomorrow will actually clean up the environment.