Industry outlook A perfect storm continued And China’s Millennials are not as pro-Western as they used to be. What this means is that It’s a revolution that the structure must be fashioned to meet these new conditions, and that may mean it has to be has no end in sight more local. After covid-19 Omicron showed that the pandemic is not We’ve also put our first flight of some over completely, but I think it will just push 4 50 candidates through our S Women’s back some of the expectations in terms Leadership program at UC Berkeley. If you look of growth and recovery by a few months. at our diversity it is broadly balanced, but at the Going forward, we are going to adopt a hybrid top levels it’s only one third female. And from model in how we work. We noticed last year an ethnic point of view, we are 40% people of that people were thirsting for more social colour – we do very well on Hispanic and Asian contact. Productivity remained very good American ethnicities, but we are around 6% or when people were working from home, but 7% black, whereas to represent the community the problem started to assert itself and cause in the US it should be 13%. In California we some angst. It was not so much about creative are representative, in New York we are not yet. spark, as simply wanting to see your confreres But we are making progress. or consoeurs and get together with them. We still think we must be very flexible, so the The metaverse and beyond template that we’re using as we renegotiate Technology is fashioning an exciting new world our leases is to take 60% of the space we had in the form of the metaverse. We were heavily before. That implies people will be in the office involved in the Meta Connect conference three days a week; it will be phased, but with where Mark Zuckerberg launched the group’s considerable flexibility. We think it is important strategy and its change of name, and with to come in, because we’ve gone from around the likes of Apple and Microsoft joining in we 2,500 people before the pandemic to 8,400 think the metaverse throws up tremendous now, and many of those people don’t know one opportunities. One key area is ecommerce: another, so it’s important they get the chance a company such as Nike or Adidas will create to do so. People have been isolated, and that’s a virtual store, and through your avatar you will not a good thing. be able try on the shoes, see what you look Doing the right thing like, and order them. The workplace is another area where the metaverse will lend itself to The world in which we operate is increasingly application because of the fact that you can dominated by issues such as environment, be anywhere. Last October S4Capital held its governance, diversity and social responsibility. first Executive Committee meeting in our 360 We’ve said that we will be net zero by 2024 degree boardroom in the metaverse, using VR with the help of carbon offsets and we are technology. We are heavily involved in exploring close to that. We’re making progress on our the potential of other nascent technologies objective to achieve B Corp accreditation. such as Epic Games’ Unreal Engine. We’ve signed both Amazon’s Climate Pledge 4 and the World Economic Forum pledge, S Capital was established with the ambition to among other commitments in the climate and be the leading player in the new era of tech-led, environmental area. In terms of governance, digital-only advertising; it’s a revolution that has we’re having to build out our structures in no end in sight. terms of legal compliance, risk and other disciplines because we’ve gone from zero to a £1.7 billion/$2.1 billion market cap in a short time. On the diversity and inclusion side, we’ve implemented our Fellowship programme. We had our first flight of fellows from the historically black universities like Howard and Morehouse and we are expanding it to black high schools. 46 S4Capital Annual Report and Accounts 2021