FOI_25-117 Investments in arms trades companies
Date of response: 15 May 2025
We have now considered your request of 15 April 2025 for the following information:
In the below request, the phrase ‘arms trade companies' relates to any company on the SIPRI Top 100 arms-producing companies and Defence News Top 100 lists. This includes but is not limited to:
1. BAE systems
2. Babcock
3. QinetiQ
4. Rolls-Royce
5. Serco
6. Cobham
7. Raytheon (RTX)
8. Airbus
9. General Dynamics
10. Leonardo MW
11. Lockheed Martin
12. Thales
13. MBDA
14. Elbit Systems
15. Northrop Grumman
16. L3 Harris Technologies
17. General Electric
18. AVIC
19. GKN Aerospace
20. Boeing
Please provide the following information from 1 January 2017 to 05 April 2025:
Question 1. Any investment made into an arms company for each financial year from the past eight calendar years. For any investment made, please detail the year the investment was made, the name of the arms company/organisation, the amount invested in GBP, and the type of investment (e.g. bonds, stocks, shares, cash holdings, options, capital etc.)
a. For each investment, please include the names of all investment management firms, funds (including but not limited to the university endowment fund) or banks used to make said investments on the university’s behalf (if applicable).
Our response:
On this occasion it is not possible to provide any of the requested information. In line with your rights under section 1(1)(a) of the Act to be informed whether information is held, we confirm that the University does not hold any recorded information for any investments made into an arms company for each financial year, in the last eight calendar years, nor do we hold any names of investments management firms, funds or banks used to make said investments on behalf of the University.
The University does not invest in armaments companies. Since 2020, our investment policy has included an exclusion on any company or organisation that generate, in aggregate, more than 10% of their turnover from weapons / armaments. This exclusion is applied by our endowment fund managers, Cazenove Capital and Brown Advisory. Please see our Investment of Endowment Funds web page for further information.
We also confirm that prior to the exclusion in place under Cazenove or Brown Advisory, we do not hold any recorded information for any investments made into arms companies by our previous fund managers.
Question 2. Please also provide the total monetary amount of the university’s endowment fund in GBP broken down by each financial year from 5 April 2017 to 5 April 2025.
Our response:
Please see the University’s Financial Statements.