Foundation as a Trusted Investor
Under our management philosophy of aspiring to be a “Trusted Investor,” Integral has consistently prioritized long-term growth and sustainability of portfolio companies over short-term profit generation, conducting investment and management support activities in partnership with portfolio company management teams. While sustainability and ESG have recently become global buzzwords, the principles of “long-term growth” and “sustainability” have been embedded in Integral’s management philosophy since its founding. Since our inception we have conducted our investment activities with values that resonate with sustainability and ESG.
In 2016, we became a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), a UN-led investment guideline for the financial sector, and established our own ESG regulations. Under these rules, we have built a robust negative screening mechanism for each investment opportunity, ensuring that our investment activities are conducted after clearly identifying ESG issues in potential investment targets. Furthermore, post-investment, we continuously strive to support the building of competitive advantages in our portfolio companies by timely and comprehensively consolidating sustainability management initiatives across all portfolio companies and sharing this knowledge among all investment professionals.
The landscape surrounding sustainability and ESG continues to evolve, and we believe our initiatives must advance to maintain a competitive level to be leading firm in the private equity industry. From this perspective, while maintaining dialogue with internal and external stakeholders, we identified our own materialities as an investment firm in 2024. We have established a Sustainability Promotion Office and built a framework in which sustainability and ESG are addressed as crucial agenda items at the Board of Directors level.
Moving forward, through the systematic implementation of initiatives based on our materiality assessment, we aim to build a virtuous cycle where we strengthen our own human capital and governance, realize long-term positive impact through the sustainable prosperity of our portfolio companies, and return the resulting investment returns to our shareholders and investors.