Global Entrepreneur Report : Elite Entrepreneurs & positive impact

November 8, 2017

The 2018 Global Entrepreneur Report has revealed that 39% of Elite Entrepreneur respondents now consider ‘positive impact’ to be core to how they assess business performance, compared to 10% of respondents two years ago. This significant increase clearly demonstrates a shift in the entrepreneurs’ mindset, and this across all regions.    Over the past 12 months, the concept of positive impact, which consists in ensuring that their business, investments and personal practices make the world better, has moved up the agenda for entrepreneurs. The report which polled over 2,700 multimillionaire entrepreneurs in 22 countries, handling a total wealth of USD 36 billion, highlighted that:

  • 55% have declared they committed a proportion of their wealth to achieving socially responsible outcomes.
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  • 80% believe that entrepreneurship is the best way to generate a global or local impact in particular relating to help safeguard the environment (with 53% in China). In Europe clean energy is the most popular cause (35%) while in the US and the Middle East, job creation ranks top of the impact agenda (36% and 40%).
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  • Elite Entrepreneurs anticipate significant increases in their future use of investment funds (34%), start-up financing (34%), private equity (32%), equity funding (32%) and impact investing (29%).
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“There is a rapid change of mindset, impacting the ways Elite Entrepreneurs invest their wealth. We recently broke the bar of €10 billion invested in responsible investments, which has more than tripled in the past 3 years. This clearly demonstrates the growing appetite from our clients for these types of strategies.” explains Sofia Merlo, Co-CEO at BNP Paribas Wealth Management.   “Their investments can amplify their ambitions to create a better environment for the next generation while reflecting their values. The ‘millennipreneurs’ hold great wealth potential and will lead the way: impressively, 64% of them are already actively engaged in impact investing, particularly in terms of job creation”, underlines Vincent Lecomte, Co-CEO at BNP Paribas Wealth Management.   Regional variations The Global Entrepreneur Survey has also highlighted regional variations. For Switzerland, 41% of respondents declared committing a portion of their wealth to responsible investments with the main areas being: environment investing (29%), equity funding (25%) and crowd-funding (16%). The top causes Swiss Elite Entrepreneurs aim to have an impact on are clean energy (54%), safeguarding the environment (48%), and create jobs (41%).  

The 5 global profiles of Impact Entrepreneurs:

ULTRAPRENEURS – an entrepreneur with a net investable wealth in excess of USD25 million.

  • 67% of Ultrapreneurs are Responsible Investors, with environmental and social business investments their most frequently used vehicles. They invest in this way to create jobs (41%), safeguard the environment (38%) and support the transition to clean energy (32%).

SERIALPRENEURS – an entrepreneur who owns or has established four or more operating companies.

  • They are more focussed on using their wealth strategically to support other high-potential businesses: they allocate 15% of their portfolio to angel investments and private equity to fund new companies.

MILLENNIPRENEURS – an entrepreneur aged 35 or under

  • 46% say they define their business success in terms of social impact, compared to 39% of all entrepreneurs. Despite this, a majority do not feel satisfied with their achievements in this area to date and identify social impact as a future business priority.

WOMEN ENTPRENEURS

  • Women Entrepreneurs continue to outperform their male peers with a higher average net worth. They are more motivated than their male counterparts to hold ESG (Environmental, social & corporate governance) investments to ensure a positive impact, at 37% vs 33% for male.

BOOMERPRENEURS – Baby Boomer aged 55 or over.

  • Boomerpreneurs take their social responsibilities seriously and are more assured than their younger peers that they have made a social impact during the 19 years on average since they first founded their business. 45% have an exposure to social and environmental investments with equity funds and environmental investments as favoured routes.

For more info on the report

  • #EliteEntrepreneurs

About BNP Paribas Wealth Management

BNP Paribas Wealth Management is a leading global private bank and #1 Private Bank in the Eurozone. Present in three hubs in Europe, Asia and the US, over 6,600 professionals provide a private investor clientele with solutions for optimising and managing their assets. The bank has €358 billion worth of assets under management (as at 30 September 2017) and was elected “Best Private Bank for Entrepreneurs” in 2016 and 2017. BNP Paribas Wealth Management leverages all of the Group’s capabilities to help entrepreneurs build a bridge between professional and personal projects at each step of development of their company.  

About Scorpio Partnership

Scorpio Partnership is the leading insight and business consultancy to the global wealth industry. The firm specialises in understanding the wealthy and the financial institutions they interact with. We have developed four transformational disciplines – SEEK, THINK, SHAPE and CREATE – each designed to enable business leaders to strategically assess, plan and drive growth. We leverage our deep insight into client needs and expectations to create practical and actionable business development strategies. Scorpio Partnership has conducted more than 500 global assignments across wealth for institutions in the banking, fund management, family offices, law, trusts, regulation, IT and technology, insurance and charity sectors. In the course of these assignments, the firm has interviewed almost 75,000 private investors and advisors. Scorpio Partnership has won multiple awards for its consultancy surveys, market insight and thought leadership across Europe, Asia, and the United States. These awards have been voted by industry peers. The firm is part of McLagan, an Aon Hewitt group company.  

Press contact BNP Paribas Wealth Management

Sarah Worsley

Press contacts – BNP Paribas Wealth Management

+33 (0)6 64 36 74 35

Claire Helleputte

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