University College Oxford Record 2020

FROM
THE
THE COLLEGE
FINANCIALS, 2019/20
As we look back upon the past
academic year, it does not feel as
though it were one of three terms
but instead, if you’ll forgive the old sporting
cliché, “very much a game of two halves”. While
2019 saw the whole fellowship engage in the
appointment of the Master-Elect and the intense
and systematic address of our deliberations for
Univ North to assure our 900+ page planning
application submission – more on this in a
moment – 2020 has been turned upside down
by COVID-19.
The College’s response to this year’s
disruption has been assured and effective. For
our finances, there is only a limited amount any
team can do to prepare for the many possible
disruptive scenarios but the underpinning truth
is that the College has always prudently retained
liquid financial resources in the form of cash and
fixed income assets to enable it to cope with
threatening events and grave disruptions. Sadly,
none of us has been untouched by COVID-19;
I don’t need to dwell on this. But Univ has
maintained a cash buffer to ensure that our
employees have been paid in full and on time,
that our liabilities have been met as they fell due,
and that we have been able to put people first
during a difficult time. These attributes are all
coherent with an entity that has been around for
centuries and looks forward to centuries more,
all in a manner that respects the privilege of
having generous supporters.
The stresses have been significant. Since mid-
March, the bulk of the anticipated student rental
income and all of the conference income has
been missing. The rental income from the tenants
FINANCE
BURSAR
in Univ’s property portfolio has
come under intense pressure
as tenant businesses have been
forced to stop trading, such as
restaurants, hotels, and high street
retail businesses. Our residential and
agricultural tenants have also felt the pinch.
So, in a world where receipts are down, the
response is to drive down costs. By mothballing
operations and using the furlough scheme, we
have brought matters more closely into balance
without compounding the distress. I do suspect
that the financial consequences will run into 2022.
To continue to ensure that our investment
assets work as hard as possible, thereby enabling
the College to do more in pursuit of its academic
and educational objects than otherwise, we have
found that our income investment strategy has
been increasingly difficult to sustain. Hitherto,
our investments were chosen and managed to
maximise natural income (dividend, interest,
rental receipts and the like). With natural income
growth proving to be increasingly difficult to
achieve, the College has agreed to move to a
total returns investment strategy. In this way, our
investment is managed by searching for income
and capital growth, enabling the College to make
use of the excess capital gains that might arise
alongside the expenditure of natural income. The
College has resolved not to change, however,
the fixed percentage drawing from its assets in
order to properly preserve endowment values
for future generations.
I would like to close on a more celebratory
note. The College is delighted that the City
Council has approved to grant consent for our
proposed “Univ North” development. Very
high levels of assurance were demanded by
the City Council on all aspects of our detailed
University College Record | October 2020 39