Corporate Responsibility
AURELIUS business activities are built on a bedrock of corporate social responsibility, ethical behaviour, and an understanding of our social and environmental responsibilities. Accordingly, AURELIUS has embedded social, environmental and corporate governance (ESG) values firmly within its corporate strategy.
At AURELIUS, we aspire to have a positive impact on the wider community and therefore, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of our core tenets. For us, CSR is closely linked to the goal of sustainable business. We have established a value-oriented corporate culture in which our corporate objectives and our commitment to the community are strategically linked.
Focusing on ESG is an important part of building value
AURELIUS recognises the vital importance of sustainability in combining business success with ESG principles. We believe that focusing on sustainability is an important part of building lasting value. AURELIUS therefore incorporates and embeds ESG and sustainability principles in its business activities as part of its core offering, on an ongoing basis.
ESG enhancement of portfolio companies is our main focus
Our core focus is to serve the interests of society and our stakeholders by incorporating and enhancing ESG aspects into our portfolio companies.
We have established a set of comprehensive responsible investment guidelines to formalise AURELIUS’s sustainability investment approach. By embedding ESG into our monitoring and operational improvement process, we recognise that risk mitigation and value creation go hand in hand.
Improvement initiated at all levels of sustainability
It has become increasingly clear that ESG elements are closely intertwined. Social issues are often related to environmental issues, and improvements or remedial actions in one area can have a positive impact on another.
Dirk Markus: “A lot of the current social issues have a strong link to the environment. They cannot be tackled separately. We are making efforts to improve on all three aspects of sustainability (environmental, social, good governance) for the benefit of our stakeholders and society.” (e.g. Transparency improvement, CO2-reduction, Refugee Initiative)
How we implement our ESG strategy:
An important component of AURELIUS' sustainability orientation is its membership of the UN Global Compact framework and the UN PRI network.
Our compass: The Ten Principles of the Global Compact
At AURELIUS we are firmly convinced that long-term business success is possible only when we operate in a responsible manner. Hence, we joined the UN Global Compact.
The Ten Principles of the United Nations Global Compact, the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative, serve as a compass for our activities. The Global Compact encourages companies to align their strategies and operating activities along globally valid principles of human and labour rights, environmental sustainability, and anti-corruption initiatives.
Moreover, we joined the UN PRI Initiative in 2021
These principles were developed by a group of the world’s major institutional investors in a dialogue which took place under the umbrella of the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment. The guidelines call on investors to promote the implementation of ESG issues throughout the financial services industry and beyond.
By implementing the PRI, we aim to enhance our sustainable investment approach and to promote sustainable business practices. We also encourage other market participants to do the same actively and transparently.
To help the society to transform to a more sustainable world, we support our portfolio companies in improving their own ESG set-up. This puts us at the forefront of initiating ESG transformational change.
We have identified these environmental, social and governance values and set ourselves the task of implementing them in the Group. This implementation is the responsibility of Dr Dirk Markus for the AURELIUS Group and the ESG officers of the respective business segments.
Dr Dirk Markus is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the AURELIUS Group and in this role also oversees the Group's ESG topics. As founder of the AURELIUS Group and longstanding CEO of AURELIUS SE & Co. KGaA and his expertise in the field of project management and process optimisation allows him to take a holistic view of ESG issues across the entire AURELIUS Group.
Dr Markus is a member of the board of Trustees of the START Foundation, providing scholarships to gifted children with a migration background.