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Commissioners’ assets rise to £5.67bn
by Pat Ashworth
FIGURES released by the Church Commissioners on Monday show that assets have risen to £5.67 billion over the past five years. A return of 9.4 per cent on investments puts the Commissioners in the top two per cent of comparable UK investment funds. The average return is only 7 per cent. The Commissioners estimated that the cost of running the Church of England in 2007 was just over £1 billion. It currently has 18,000 serving and retired clergy. Three-quarters of its income comes from dioceses and parishes, mostly through members’ giving. The Commissioners, who manage its historic resources, have the twin spending aims of fulfilling clergy pension obligations and of increasing support for other church purposes in line with average earnings. They contributed £177.8 million in 2007, about one sixth of the total cost, an increase from £172.6 million in 2006. Of the 2007 total, £105.5 million was for clergy pensions based on service before 1998. Of the remainder, £32.9 million went to parish mission and ministry support, primarily to less well-resourced dioceses. Chelmsford, Durham, Lichfield, and Manchester all received £2 million or more; Birmingham, Bradford, Derby, Exeter, Leicester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Norwich, Sheffield, Southwell & Nottingham, Wakefield, and York all received more than £1 million. The sum of £24.9 million went to supporting bishops’ diocesan and national ministries; £6.8 million to stipends of cathedral clergy and grants to cathedrals, and £7.7 million was spent on other support, including administration and restructuring costs, support for other church bodies, and church buildings. Andrew Brown, secretary to the Commissioners, said this week: “At a time of tighter finances across the economy, these returns will help the Church of England continue to fulfil its mission to serve all the people of this country. “We manage our investments for the long term, and while we cannot be immune from the current uncertainties in the world economy, we have a diverse portfolio and are well-positioned to weather difficult financial conditions.” The Commissioners’ property portfolio produced the best results. They took advantage of a peak in the UK market cycle to sell two commercial properties at prices above book value: a 1980s office development at Verulam Point, St Albans, which sold for £17.9 million, and a City of London office in Old Jewry, for £10.15 million. The sale of the 2566-acre Dissington estate in Northumberland for £18.5 million was also significantly above book value. Other property deals included reinvestment and rebranding in Connaught Village, London W2, which forms the core of the Hyde Park estate — activity that included acquiring ten shops in Kendal Street for £8.5 million. The Commissioners also bought Binchester Hall as an addition to the Bishop Auckland estate. Plans for this are intended to facilitate development of the Roman fort Vinovia into, it is hoped, a significant tourist attraction. Proceeds from the sale of closed churches and sites were at their highest level in a decade, at just under £3 million. Strategic land-development sites produced a positive return of 49.8 per cent. Overseas investment included a pan-Asian property fund and a prime residential estate in Manhattan, New York. The report lists the larger investments of stock-exchange and fixed-interest holdings over £6 million. Oil companies top the list of 83: Royal Dutch Shell (£180.2 million) and BP (£144.3 million), with Vodafone third at £133.7 million, and HSBC fourth at £125.6 million. The Commissioners are revealed to have shares in top pharmaceutical companies such as GlaxoSmithKline and Roche; supermarkets such as Tesco, Morrison’s, Marks and Spencer, and Sainsbury’s; food manufacturers such as Cadbury Schweppes and Nestlé; and software giants such as Microsoft, Apple, and Google. The Commissioners’ report reiterates its basic ethical policy on investments. It avoids companies that promote pornography or supply armaments. It avoids investment in any company where more than 25 per cent of group turnover relates to gambling, tobacco and tobacco-related products, the manufacture or licensed sale of alcoholic drinks, military equipment, home-collected credit (doorstep lending), or human embryonic cloning. Against the background of a “heightened sense of economic insecurity” from the banking crisis, the First Church Estates Commissioner, Andreas Whittam Smith, concludes in the report: “I believe our position is prudent. We ourselves have no borrowings at present, though we invest in some companies and property partnerships that have.”The full report is at http://cofe.anglican.org/about/churchcommissioners/annualreport |
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