Merchant Venturers
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Dirty money? The Society's investments
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Dirty money? The Society's investments

The Merchants run a company called SMV Investments that owns properties and trades shares. Most of the people we identify in the Society's inner circle are directors of the firm.
SMV Investments - worth just over £7 million - is an unlimited company, meaning that it does not have to file accounts or an annual report at Companies House (www.companies-house.gov.uk), the official register or UK companies. However, it did send Companies House an annual report in March 2001, which contains detailed information about the financial year that ended on 10 November 2000. Although it is now two and a half years old, it is the most up-to-date information about the firm on public record. Parkes claims that SMV no longer files accounts with Companies House because it isn't run as a company any more.
In 2001, SMV Investments had £564,000 invested in property. It included land behind properties on Redland Road, a building in Kingsholme Road in Southmead, land between York Place and Richmond Terrace in Clifton, properties at 146 and 150 Whiteladies Road, and the Artillery Ground, home to the Territorial Army, also on Whiteladies.
But it is believed the Society's holdings stretch far beyond Bristol. At the beginning of 2002, its agricultural portfolio consisted of 21,323 acres. The Society controls farms as far away as Basingstoke, a nursery, a canal longboat marina and a gravelpit in Buckinghamshire. Part of its huge Croome Estate at Defford near Worcester is home to a government surveillance and communications station.
According to its 2001 accounts, SMV also had £6.7 million invested in 33 companies. As you'd expect, most of the shares are in investment trusts, banks and major firms. But SMV had money with some firms engaged in what many would call highly questionable activities. It had:
* £41,000 with BAe Systems (www.baesystems.co.uk). Now the world's biggest arms producer, BAe Systems makes submarines, warships, warplanes and missiles. It has sold arms to some of the most repressive regimes in the world, including Indonesia and Saudi Arabia.
* £203,000 in Marconi(www.marconi.com), a communications firm, part owned by BAe, also heavily involved in military contracts.
* £126,000 with British American Tobacco, (www.bat.com) the UK's largest tobacco company (and a major rival to Bristol-based Imperial Tobacco). In 2000, BAT was accused of smuggling, racketeering and tax evasion. It is currently under investigation by the Department For Trade And Industry for alleged smuggling.
* £423,000 with Astrazeneca (www.astrazeneca.co.uk), long criticised for its huge investments in GM technology. In 2000 they were exposed for secretly developing so-called GM terminator technology, which aid agencies and charities believe will allow multi-nationals to hold Third World farmers to ransom.
* £78,000 in Glaxo Wellcome (now called GlaxoSmithKline www.gsk.com), seriously criticised for allegedly putting its profits before the rights of HIV victims in the developing world to get affordable treatment.
* £901,000 in the petrol company Shell (www.shell.com), accused of serious human rights violations in Nigeria. November 10, the day the Merchants' go to church and sign off SMV's accounts, marks the most shameful episodes in Shell's history: the hanging in 1995 of the Nigerian environmentalist and community leader Ken Saro-Wiwa. He was hanged after a show trial along with eight other community activists who opposed Shell's presence in Ogoniland. Shell is implicated in their arrest and trial; the firm has also admitted paying field allowances and providing logistical support to the brutal Nigerian military in Ogoniland. Ken's brother, Owens Wiwa, says: "It is our firm belief that Shell's role in the hanging of Ken and the other eight Ogoni was to enable investors to get more profit. It is imperative for such investors to be made aware of the human and environmental waste that is traded off for their profit, and also to insist that the investors divest from corporations like Shell. This is the only moral and legitimate step to take, in order to stop the murders and destruction that go on in the developing world in the name of development."

But the Merchants are unmoved by these criticisms. "If it's the will of the donor that the funds are invested ethically, then we will do so," says Parkes. "But the trustees have a duty to act in the best interest of this trust - it is not an ethical fund." He said the organisation "knows nothing at all" about the activities of Shell in Nigeria - even though it was front-page news at the time.
Parkes claims that income from SMV is now used "for the Society to pay its way, to pay staff and run the Merchants Hall" - SMV's accounts show that, at least historically, payments were made by SMV investments to several charities. So profits from the Shell shares were funding Bristol charities.