In brief: UK government nature fund to target real assets and PE opportunities

Federated Hermes, an asset management business with $19 billion of private markets AUM, is partnering with social enterprise Finance Earth to manage a natural capital strategy. The Big Nature Impact Fund is seeded by the UK government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), which announced the mandate to “develop a new public-private impact fund to invest in restoring nature” late last week.

Defra will provide seed investment and play “an active role in setting the fund’s mandate”, it said. Details of the fund are limited at this stage and a spokesperson for Federated Hermes declined to elaborate on the strategy. Finance Earth did not respond to a request for comment.

A person with knowledge of the strategy said it will invest in both nature-based real asset solutions (ie, nature restoration projects), as well as nature restoration value chain businesses.

The managers will now engage with third party investors and project developers.

Further reading:

• Schroders signals natural capital intent
• StepStone to urge LPs to ‘lean in’ on natural capital