“Before heaven there is life on earth and here we have to focus on building a social, just and caring society“
Heinz Nixdorf
“Before heaven comes life on earth, and it is important to build a social society.” This motto of the German “hidden champion”, Heinz Nixdorf, whose name and work still resonates today, was also formative for his niece, Dagmar Nixdorf. As an entrepreneur with heart and soul, she adopted the motto for her own conduct and action.
In her search for investment solutions and goals that corresponded to the demands of her uncle, she repeatedly however, had to confront limits: especially with funds in terms of concept and content. The available instruments seldomly corresponded to what we now call sustainable.
That is why she decided to take the initiative herself: By establishing NIXDORF Kapital AG, a company was created that was able to act in accordance with the aforementioned mindset, its ethical ideals and its social responsibility and willingness to invite others to participation and partnership.
The response to the ideas of her team was tremendous: Together with selected partners, the company quickly created vehicles that can combine a sustainable positive social impact with adequate profitability. And the development is in full swing.
And so, the vision expressed many decades earlier by Heinz Nixdorf will continue to contribute in the following generations to what can be developed today: Contributions to a social society.
Impact investing means: profit and allow others to profit as well. In this sense, NIXDORF Kapital AG sees itself as a pioneer for positive transformation processes for the common good based on real value creation and mittelständische (medium-sized) business ethics.
NIXDORF Kapital AG was founded in 2016 with the specific aim to assume responsibility for society and employees – plus realizing this via the meaningful allocation of capital. In doing so, we are guided by a widely popular, widely used principle that also shaped the actions of Heinz Nixdorf:
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The best way to predict the future is to shape it.
It is true that during the last two decades capital in its essence may have decoupled from society, self-referential and unbounded. Nevertheless, structurally it continues to depict the real added value of companies. Its capability lies in the potential of the term “return on equity”. As we know one meaning of the English term equity is “justice”.
Capital can be the starting point for a social “impact”, a source of strength with a long-term positive effect – both for investors and for the common good.
That is why NIXDORF Kapital AG has placed impact investing at the center of its activities: As a “facilitator” of our own ideas and concepts, we provide investors with various financial vehicles – always in line with our mittelständische (medium-sized) values, sustainability-driven ideas and our high-quality standards with regard to portfolio management.
NIXDORF Kapital AG stands in the tradition of the values of the Mittelstand (middle class): one person, one word – one family, one society – one country, one Europe, one common future. We are evaluators in the sense of reason, community, economic development – along with classic entrepreneurial ethics.
As impact investors we think across generations, do business sensibly, and want to consistently do things for the greater good. In this sense, we see ourselves less as investors or capital managers, but rather as facilitators, pioneers, and a platform for partners who represent, share, and carry our common idea into the world.
Our portfolios focus on responsible companies and measurable positive public welfare effects. Thus, we are setting an example for innovation, freedom, sustainability and comprehensive prosperity.
The NIXDORF Core Values Tree represents a historical-ethical foundation of responsible entrepreneurship. More authentic than many other factors that have driven the markets in the last few decades, our tree acts as a guide to a better future. Many of its values have already been successfully preserved by Heinz Nixdorf and are now being implemented in the NIXDORF Kapital AG.
NIXDORF Core Values Tree 2021
On behalf of a Stable and Sustainable Performance
When a mittelständischer (middle-class) businessman invests his capital, he is not searching for a quick profit, but rather the long-term development of the company behind the value. He knows about the ups and downs of the markets, works with a steady hand and does not panic. When we apply this way of thinking to the capital market, it implies leaving behind the short-term, speculative trading approach without a perspective investment strategy.
The Basis of Sustainable Value Creation: Interlinking Finance and Real Economy
A large part of the financial markets has decoupled itself from the real economy. This fact has been repeatedly bemoaned, and yet accepted in view of the enormous potential for returns.
However, we are convinced that the real economy and the capital market are inseparable; can achieve more together. Additionally, every partial goal that brings us closer to our larger goal, also brings us the result we are striving for: Impact!
Value Creation in Harmony with the World
As part of society, business must take responsibility for the environment from which it draws its values. This may still function in regional structures. The real challenge, however, lies in the transformation of global unions. This is where investors decide about the future of the world.
Not a single cent can be earned directly from social responsibility. Sometimes it even costs money, and yet it makes a tremendous contribution to the value proposition: for the municipalities, the cities and the villages; for the social infrastructure, public and politics.
Over time, however capital has only served the capital markets, and has lost its reason for existence: its serving function for the prosperity and future of people and regions.
Great Principles that Function Even on a Small Scale
At the regional level, the benefits are usually still comprehensible: Company successes generate tax revenues and benefit the population directly: in the form of social infrastructure such as kindergartens, schools, recreational facilities or cultural institutions. Effects on the environment and biodiversity can also be tracked at the regional level.
This is unequally complex on a global level.
It is therefore only a matter of time before the inclusion of ideas such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or the principles for responsible investment of the United Nations become a learning standard.
Success is only Good if it is Achieved Mutually – if Achieved Jointly even Better
Since its establishment, NIXDORF Kapital AG has placed great value on European cooperation. Only by sharing, the future can be successful. A genuine value of our culture.
Only a united and peaceful Europe can master the challenges that climate change and demographic development pose to societies.
That is why we at NIXDORF Kapital AG, with its mittelständische (medium-sized) German culture, have thought supranational from the start: We are convinced Europeans and global citizens. We reject isolation and exclusion. A willingness to talk at any time to enable finding compromises is part of our agenda.
The national societies and their economic activity have grown together and benefit from each other. At this point the phrase “There is only one world” is always correct. Only together issues such as climate change and intergenerational fairness can be addressed successfully.
In Agreement of a Reliable Cooperation
NIXDORF Kapital AG expects all business partners to feel committed to the classic, mittelständischen (middle-class) value system: Reliability and honesty, the principle of the honorable businessman are the cornerstones of sustainable, entrepreneurial and successful networks.
We are avowed mittelständische (medium-sized) business personalities. The essence of characteristics of the “honorable businessman” has developed from this value system. Of course, his actions are also primarily economically motivated. But because he still wants to live in his village, his city, his region, his country tomorrow, he makes his decisions in harmony with the world around him. He acts reliably towards others.
Our Foundation: Our Values
In the meantime, this ‘environment’ has grown significantly. The majority of mittelständische (medium-sized) businesses operate internationally.
When it comes to the attitude of the mittelständischen (medium-sized) businessman, it still refers to questions of reliability and honesty:
All of these questions are fundamentally important for NIXDORF Kapital and must be answered with a resounding “YES”. We expect exactly the same, especially from business partners.
A lot has happened in recent years. Funds dealing with sustainability no longer have to be reinvented. They have been around for well over a decade. We can rely on their groundwork and experience as well as on the rules defined by the United Nations.
A Good Name with a Clear Conscience
Impact investing means being able to rely on innovative and future-oriented investments with clear impact measurement. A requirement that we ensure that our customers and investors meet.
Reputation plays a major role, especially in today’s world. There have never been so many sources to get informed and receive information. Anyone who disinforms or is insincere will be discovered sooner or later. The damage to reputation is immense and has an enormous negative impact on further economic development.
We therefore investigate very carefully who can be a NIXDORF partner – and who cannot. If there are any doubts about the reputation, no cooperation will be granted.
Dr. Andreas Rickert is driven by the deep desire to create added value for society. He is now also pursuing this mission at NIXDORF Kapital AG.
Dr. Andreas Rickert is a studied molecular biologist and cannot be placed in any particular drawer: Engagement Manager at McKinsey, Senior Specialist at the World Bank, Director at the Bertelsmann Foundation and founder and CEO of PHINEO gAG. Through studies in Davis, a doctorate from Stanford, lived and worked in Bahrain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Switzerland and the USA, he is internationally orientated.
Through management experience in large companies and organizations and the successful establishment of a start-up, he has played a significant role as bridge builder between different worlds. Seats on various advisory boards, supervisory boards of companies and non-profit organizations round off his varied range of activities.
Driven by the deep desire to create added value for society, he founded PHINEO in 2010. The success of his work is based on pronounced network connections with policy makers in business, civil society and politics.
Andreas Rickert is convinced: Together we can and will create a sustainable society.
Volker Weber has been in the Board of NIXDORF Kapital AG since September 2019. In his role as Sustainability Officer he is responsible for the sustainability topics of the NIXDORF Group.
Volker Weber is a member of the board of NIXDORF Kapital AG since September 2019. As Chief Sustainability Officer he is responsible for the group’s sustainability policy.
With a background in business management, Volker Weber has engaged in sustainable finance for more than 20 years and is a well-established expert in the field.Since September 2007, Volker Weber is director of the Forum Nachhaltige Geldanlagen (FNG: Association for sustainable investments for organisations in Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland) and has contributed significantly to the association’s transparency code and the FNG-certificate.
Furthermore, since 2015, he is a member of the Board of Directors of Eurosif (the European association for sustainable finance), where he supported the development of the EU action plan “Financing Sustainable Growth”.
In his capacity as Chief Sustainability Officer, Volker Weber is responsible for the sustainability and impact investing strategies of NXDORF Kapital AG and its subsidiaries. He focuses on developing methods for the purpose of measuring the effectiveness of sustainability and its impact.
Since February 2021 Volker Weber is also Co-CEO of NIXDORF Kapital AG.
Dagmar Nixdorf, founder of NIXDORF Kapital AG.
She originates from a family of entrepreneurs who are consistently committed to supporting society and environment, gained many years of experience in succession and turnaround management in Germany responding to the needs of investors.
Dr. Feuling is a committed corporate and economic philosopher, who among other things is currently the founder and managing director of Credible Services GmbH, a carrier of the independent portal Gute-Banken.de, which is committed to sustainably and socially-oriented banks.
The goal of NIXDORF Kapital can be summed up in one sentence. We strive to enable our partners and investors to have a sustainable and powerful impact on the basis of effective, future-proof investments. We pursue this mandate with well-founded strategies and in constant interchange with practice.
In order to achieve this, our company relies on a proven company tradition: the active connection of business and management. Our operational advisory board is made up of outstanding personalities who are proven economic seismologists, idea multipliers, market designers and value providers.
Combining finance and the real economy at the highest level, Dr. Rüschen combines the values of the Mittelstand (medium-class) with the social and ecological challenges that our society must overcome.
He is familiar with the people, methods and ways with which mittelständische (medium-class) assets are holistically and valuably invested. Taking into account economic, ecological or social goals, and in accordance with the specific conceptions of the asset owner, he develops individual allocation strategies that strive for adequate long-term results.
Pursuing economic goals and conscious that this also entails responsibility for future generations has been part of his professional life for two decades, which includes his time as CEO of Deutsche Oppenheim Family Office AG. He is currently a member of the advisory board of Deutsche Oppenheim and since September 2020 he is also a member of the advisory board of NIXDORF Kapital AG.
Dr. Rüschen describes his function on the advisory board as follows:
“We will only master the ecological and social challenges of our society if we succeed in transforming our economic activity in such a way that the guidance of these challenges becomes part of our economic activity. This requires the combination of innovative business models that address ecological and social imbalances with capital-seeking returns. As a member of the advisory board of NIXDORF Kapital AG, it is my upmost concern to make a contribution to this effort.“
Ida Beerhalter is co-lead of IOME, a private association of female investors in the Golf region with head offices in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Apart from that she is active as member of boards, trustee, committee member, advisor and expert for numerous profit and non-profit organizations globally – among them:
• Auma Obama Foundation Sauti Kuu, Kenya & Germany
• Green Rubber Group, Malaysia
• Green Sands Equity, USA
• Professors without Borders, UK
• Jim Button Foundation, Germany
• Aescuvest, Europe
She specialises in wide range of topics including social business, entrepreneurship, impact investment, education, leadership, economic development, mental health, gender equality, empowerment of women and minorities, emerging and expanding markets investing, as well as asset management, fiscal literature, family businesses and succession planning.
As an investor who also manages her own Investment portfolio. Ida Beerhalter was awarded the TIAW World of Difference Award in 2015.
Her Statement:
„Unfortunately sustainability can no longer make the claim to preserve the existing, but also must be able to develop the strength to rectify the damage caused by the wrong, careless, ignorant, unknowing, egotistical and short-term thinking – only for the intent of profit-oriented economic activity, and evolved through wrong use of capital. We would like to bundle this strength at NIXDORF Kapital AG .”
As a beacon of success with a feel for future issues, Jochen Wermuth demonstrates to the world how green investments can bring successful and long-term returns – at the interface of demand and supply; but above all, from experience.
Even now he offers his investors completely sustainable allocation channels across all asset classes, with a better long-term, risk-return profile than with traditional asset structuring.
Through the foundation of the asset management company, Wermuth Asset Management GmbH, he created the vehicle for this endeavor himself.
Moreover, and together with other partners he launched the Green Growth Funds and the Climate Endowment Group.
Beyond that, Jochen Wermuth is a member of the investment committee of the German state fund KENFO.
Jochen Wermuth on his activity on the advisory board of NIXDORF Kapital AG:
„I have always been convinced that the markets always have more than enough liquidity and vehicles for all sustainable development, growth and operational projects. It depends on how you develop robust ways to connect supply and demand. As a member of the advisory board of Nixdorf Kapital I can and want to make an active contribution.“