Leg
What it means for family businesses
C. Hoare & Co.
focus and ambition. We now have 70% of colleagues enrolled in our Give-As-You-Earn scheme and customers are donating well over £100m a year to charity through our donor-advised fund. That evolution is also evident in the transformation of the Hoare family’s own charitable activity. Sustained by an annual donation of 10% of bank profits, the Golden Bottle Trust has become a place of philanthropic learning: it has moved 100% of its investments into impact investments, undertaken innovative early-stage grant programmes and even reformed its governance; last year we moved this 40-year-old charity into our donor-advised fund. Longevity confers responsibility. For long-established family businesses, legacy is not something to be preserved unchanged, but something living, requiring judgement, continuity and the quiet confidence to renew what has endured.
and more a distillation of judgement: stories, principles and lessons learned (including what to avoid). In time, that reflective record will help inform the decisions of future partners. Yet legacy need not rest with one individual alone. It can be shaped collectively through decisions taken deliberately at moments of transition. A significant moment came in 2018, as the 10th generation stepped back and the 11th took on fuller responsibility. We recognised the need to articulate, explicitly and simply, what we stood for. The result was a clear statement of purpose: to be “good bankers and good citizens”. The phrase is uncomplicated, but its effect has been profound. It took a long-held implicit principle and made it visible. Since then, it has served as a North Star. It sits at the front of board and management papers, frames discussions and informs daily decision making. Most importantly, it has brought greater coherence, helping align activity, judgement and intent. This clarity has been particularly valuable in the bank’s philanthropic work. Giving has always been part of its character, yet purpose has sharpened
It is easy to assume that, in an institution that has been operating for more than three and a half centuries, the scope for creating new legacy is limited. Rennie Hoare Twelfth generation Partner and Head of Philanthropy at C. Hoare & Co. When a business has endured that long, and when 50 members of one family have together contributed nearly 1,600 years of stewardship, it can feel as though the story is already complete. In practice, the opposite is true. Each generation of C. Hoare & Co. is a temporary custodian, entrusted with interpreting what it inherits and, in doing so, adding something of its own. My cousin Alexander Hoare has recently done just that. His book, Impact Banker , reflects on nearly 40 years’ experience as an 11th generation partner of the bank. It is less a memoir
C.Hoare & Co. building on Fleet Street
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FBUK Issue 7
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