Impact investment platform Bamboo Capital Partners (Bamboo), and Palladium, a global impact advisory and management firm, have entered into a long-term strategic partnership to ‘deliver impact at scale’. Under the terms of the strategic partnership, Palladium has taken a minority stake in Bamboo.
Bamboo and Palladium have joined forces to achieve their shared objective of mobilising private sector investment at scale to significantly contribute toward the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The strategic partnership combines Bamboo’s knowledge of institutional and private sector investors and its track record of impact investing in emerging markets, with Palladium’s global footprint, sector expertise, and substantial pipeline of investible opportunities.
The initial investment will provide Bamboo with additional growth capital to increase its scale and accelerate the development of SDG500, a USD500 million blended finance impact investment vehicle, and create new products in the future. Palladium’s investment has potential to grow in size over time.
The strategic partnership will see Bamboo become the asset management arm of Palladium, expanding the company’s offerings in addition to its capital advisory, program management, strategy, and logistics capabilities. Palladium will be able to deploy more capital at a faster rate in a wider range of businesses to deliver both impact and financial returns for investors. Palladium will also continue to drive the achievement of the SDGs with Palladium Impact Capital (formerly Enclude), its capital advisory business, which will operate independently from Bamboo.
Jean-Philippe de Schrevel, Founder and Managing Partner at Bamboo Capital Partners, says: “Since I founded Bamboo in 2007, our vision has always been that large-scale impact investing can solve many of the world’s problems and improve the lives of the most marginalised communities. Our pioneering work has paved the way for partnerships with UN agencies and NGOs, and the creation of our groundbreaking SDG500 initiative. This is just the beginning. We are now entering into this long-term strategic partnership with Palladium – a complementary, like-minded and mission-aligned business – in order to fast track our shared objective of delivering impact at scale. The entire Bamboo team is looking forward to working with Palladium in the coming years as we execute upon our shared vision to achieve Agenda 2030.”
Christopher Hirst, Chief Executive Officer at Palladium, adds: “This deal comes at an historic time. In the last six months, Covid-19 has exacerbated the global challenges we already faced; challenges that haven’t gone away while the world’s attention has been focused on the pandemic. Palladium has been working to create positive impact for more than half a century, and never before has our mission felt more urgent or in need of investment. What Bamboo and Palladium share is this sense of urgency. Coupling that urgency with our complementary capabilities and track records means we can meet these challenges with bolder, bigger, and more effective solutions.”
