A TALK ABOUT PERSONAL AMBITION, PURPOSE AND IMPACT
Joost Linnemann (CEO Kennedy Van der Laan) speaks with Jisk Hoogma (General Counsel Invest-NL):
Joost Linnemann has been the CEO of Kennedy Van der Laan since 2018. He spoke with Jisk Hoogma, General Counsel and Company Secretary of the impact investor Invest-NL. A talk about personal ambition, purpose and impact. Hoogma: “Our teams are made up of people who have made the conscious choice to work in an impact environment.”
Linnemann: “Kennedy Van der Laan has always been a socially responsible firm. In a joint effort with my colleagues, I wish to accentuate this profile. That is why I have talks with organizations and people who make the difference.” Invest-NL, founded in 2019, is a private enterprise funded with public means. The State is a shareholder via the Dutch Finance Ministry. The organization’s objective is to invest in enterprises that can offer solutions for social tasks.
Besides a financial return, Invest-NL also wants to have a social return. Invest-NL has a mandate to invest EUR 1.7 billion in the coming five years. About EUR 400 million has already been committed.
Willingness to invest
“Without exception, our teams are made up of people who have made the conscious choice to work in an impact environment.”
Since a broad statutory mandate and objective require prioritising, Invest-NL focuses strongly on investments in the energy transition and innovative start- and scale-ups, e.g. in the circular economy, health care sector and agri-food. Jisk Hoogma, who was involved in Invest-NL from the start, has been its General Counsel and Company Secretary since 2020. Previously, he worked as an attorney in the Corporate practice at Kennedy Van der Laan. “The market shows us that we can make the difference”, Hoogma says. “Socially relevant projects tend to have problems with getting funding. There is a great degree of uncertainty, and the semi-public environment is a particularly complex playing field with many stakeholders. We can play a key role in high-risk appetite projects; we can use longer terms and since we work with public capital, the government also has an interest in our projects being successful. By removing bottlenecks for scale-up and growth, we increase the willingness of market parties to invest.”
Passion
Linnemann: “It is common for organizations that aim to change society to attract a certain type of professionals. What about yours?” Hoogma: “Basically, our investment managers do not differ from their colleagues in commercial investment companies, but they share one important feature: they are very passionate and really want to make the difference for society. This goes for everyone who works here, really. Without exception, our teams are made up of people who have made the conscious choice to work in an impact environment.”
Personally, Hoogma feels in his element at Invest-NL. “I am still part of a very interesting deals practice, but in a place where social involvement, purpose and impact are top. That is a very pleasant combination.” Linnemann mentions that feeling a personal need for positive social change is important if you want to contribute to it at an organisational level. “It is not the core business of a law firm to induce change or realize a positive impact”, he says. “But in order to make a change as a firm and be aware of your (potential) impact, you have to involve everybody within the organisation. A memo or a rousing New Year’s speech will not do the trick. The need to change has to be felt, and then converted into action. That includes allowing people from outside your own circle to challenge and inspire you.” One of Hoogma’s criteria when engaging external advisors for Invest-NL is that they have affinity with impact. “It is not decisive, but preferable.”
Man on the moon
“It took me some getting used to the public component of working in a state holding”, Hoogma says, who worked at ABN AMRO after having been a lawyer, and spent one year in New York. “Investing with public funds means having more hurdles to cross, in the scope of rules on state aid, and we are also under scrutiny: are we investing too slowly or too fast? But more importantly, we can really be pioneers in this field.” Practically speaking, the nature and objectives of the organization greatly impact the activities of his legal team. “Examples of important questions are how to enshrine impact objectives in contracts, and how to deal with high risks from a legal perspective. One could say that we provide the legal backbone for the deals and investments we are involved in.” When asked about the impact of his work as General Counsel and Company Secretary on the general objectives of the enterprises, Hoogma quotes an anecdote about John F. Kennedy. When Kennedy once asked a cleaner at NASA about his work, the cleaner answered: “I help putting a man on the moon every day.” “Whatever your role within this organization is, you contribute with your expertise and experience to an important goal: making the Netherlands more sustainable and innovative. As far as I’m concerned, you cannot get more relevant than that.”
