I am delighted to share with you the news that today the University successfully issued a £300m public bond.
Together with internally-generated funds, such as philanthropy, this will allow us to invest around £600m in our people, facilities and infrastructure over the next 10 years, enabling us to start realising the ‘Simply better’ strategy that we first outlined last year.
This is a very significant development for us as a university community. As the single biggest capital injection in the University’s 155-year history, the funding gives us a fantastic opportunity to invest strategically for the long-term global reputation of the University, and to work together to ensure we continue to provide an exceptional world-class environment for our students and staff.
The success of this bond issue – at a record low-interest rate for a public bond issued by a UK university – is a huge vote of confidence by investors in our University and our strategy for the future, and has the full backing of the University Council.
As I hope you can understand, the regulatory and legal constraints around this have required everyone involved to maintain the utmost confidentiality during the process, which has prevented me from talking to you about this development until today.
The University will announce more detailed plans for its programme of campus improvements over the coming 12 months. As you can imagine, a number of significant projects are under consideration – each will require a rigorous business case and robust scrutiny before approval by the University Executive Board and then by Council.
Best wishes,
Sir Christopher Snowden
President and Vice-Chancellor
