Quadrature Capital Limited (owned by Greg Skinner and Suneil Setiya) believe that our processes, policies and actions should be aligned with the values and ethics that Quadrature lives by. We are an environmentally and ethically conscious business, aiming to be a positive contributor to society, and we believe that employers should be transparent when it comes to their CSR work. This is so that we can all hold each other accountable on the role businesses play in society and in their communities. We have shared below what we do and how we think about things, not as a way to promote our work, but as a way to be transparent.
Giving
Greg and Suneil are passionate about supporting causes that address three challenges: poverty, inequality and human suffering.
QCF
In 2018 Greg and Suneil came to understand the way the climate crisis superimposed onto these challenges, leading them to establish the Quadrature Climate Foundation (QCF), focusing exclusively on efforts to combat climate change, the most urgent challenge of our time. QCF is fully-funded by the Quadrature Group through allocation of a proportion of trading profits. It operates as an independent charity governed by The Charity Commission.
You can find more information about QCF here.
Other Giving
In addition to QCF, the Quadrature Group supports a variety of charities and partners.
We seek to support causes that pursue a balanced approach to progress, whereby economic growth and environmental sustainability go hand in hand. We strive for a society where people have diverse opportunities and choices available to them without compromising the future of our planet. Global partners have included Norwegian Refugee Council, UNICEF UK, International Medical Corps UK, The Access Project, Teach First, St Giles Trust and Clement James.
In May 2024, we came to the view that a UK Government with a commitment to the green transition of the economy would have the ability to drive change that is so urgently needed. Having analysed commitments set out by each party, we donated £4m to The Labour Party, in support of policies that will deliver climate action while also promoting social equity and economic resilience. This was a values-based donation, not a political donation, as Quadrature Capital Ltd remains non-partisan and apolitical. Going forward, our private giving will continue to be led by our values, and any further donations to political parties will depend on the parties’ commitments, track record and alignment with our mission for sustainable and equitable growth.
Tax
Quadrature Capital Limited is the UK-based investment manager for the Quadrature Group’s fund entities, which are based in the Cayman Islands. The establishment of funds in the Cayman Islands is very common for trading firms with investors based across multiple jurisdictions, and has a number of regulatory advantages.
The funds’ establishment in the Cayman Islands is primarily a legacy of a period of time when the funds had outside investors. All trading capital now belongs to the Quadrature Group, to employees or to related parties. Quadrature does not seek to obtain a UK corporation tax advantage by establishing its funds in the Cayman Islands: since the funds have historically been managed exclusively from the UK by Quadrature Capital Limited, all of the trading profits of the funds have been subject to UK corporation tax.
Given that Quadrature funds are not UK-based they do not disclose accounts to Companies House - unlike Quadrature Capital Limited, the London-based investment manager which does file accounts in the UK each year. Typically, the corporation tax paid to HMRC by Quadrature’s fund entities on their trading profits significantly exceeds that paid (and so publicly disclosed) by Quadrature Capital Limited. As such, the Quadrature Group, including the funds, is a major UK taxpayer, with payments to-date in excess of £2bn. This figure does not take into account the material amounts of income tax payable by Quadrature’s staff and related parties on any gains when they redeem their fund interests.
The Quadrature Group will always seek to comply with applicable tax legislation and is committed to being a responsible taxpayer, as more fully disclosed in our Tax Strategy.
The Environment
Data Centres
The nature of our business, with its complex models and large scale data use, means that we have an increasing demand for greater computing capacity. As a business we intend to offset all of our emissions (including all of those due to our compute / Data Center use). However, we believe that there is more we can do, which is why we decided a few years ago to move the vast majority of our capacity to Norway. We have chosen a specific site in Norway which has multiple independent electricity feeds from a nearby hydroelectric plant, guaranteeing that the energy we’re consuming is 100% drawn directly from this renewable source.
Trading and Climate
Quadrature applies market neutral trading strategies broadly across markets globally. We seek to forecast and trade both positive and negative price movements whilst targeting neutral exposures across markets and industry groups. Given the nature of our trading, we are agnostic to the underlying nature of the stocks we trade and primarily seek to correct inefficiencies in the market. We only trade in the public markets and do not participate in primary issuances of debt or equity.
As mentioned above, our founders established a foundation to help combat the climate emergency, and we allocate a proportion of our profits to QCF’s work in advancing critical climate solutions each year. To date, QCF has committed in excess of $1bn to over 180 organisations globally.
Previously, we assessed excluding oil & gas stocks from the universe of securities we trade. However, we concluded the impact of such exclusions would have a negligible impact on the industry in comparison to the contributions we make through QCF. With that in mind we maintain short and long positions in oil and gas publicly traded stocks concurrently and only hold these positions for short periods of time, adding no material value to the underlying businesses.
In certain jurisdictions, such as the US, firms like ours are obligated to make point-in-time disclosures on long positions, without an equivalent obligation to disclose short positions. This regulatory asymmetry may inaccurately portray us at any point to have a bias towards oil & gas stocks, failing to properly reflect our trading strategy to target neutral exposures across industry groups.
Corporate
Pensions
We offer our employees a truly sustainable and ethical pension fund with Aviva’s Stewardship Life Fund.
Office Design
We have designed our office space to carefully consider our ongoing and future effect on the environment, our ethical choices, and the kind of space we’d like our people to be in. The design and construction impact on the environment has also been carefully considered. Considerations include:
- Carefully sourced and ethical materials, finishes and specifications, known for their eco-credentials and low impact on the environment.
- Sustainable, natural and biodegradable materials (wherever possible).
- Selecting suppliers, contractors, and collaborators who share our ethical values.
- The use of non-combustible materials.
- Avoiding synthetic, harmful or cheap materials.
Office Management
We aim to ensure that we use sustainable suppliers for the food and drinks that we offer our employees when they are in the office. We source fruits from a local producer, and partner with local businesses that can provide locally grown/sourced produce where possible.
For deliveries (e.g. stationery), we aim to purchase only sustainable and ethically sourced products. We are currently reviewing ways that we can use low impact vehicles to deliver products (e.g. cyclist deliveries), and we also try to bundle up our deliveries to minimise the need for multiple drivers. Employees are not permitted to deliver personal items to the office, a Leadenhall Building initiative that helps minimise pollution in central London.
We sort all our waste to recycle as much as possible, and in London the Leadenhall building helps us with this by keeping records of all company recycling stats. We are also a paperless office, in that we encourage no printing unless necessary.
Diversity and Inclusion
We want to build and grow a successful, inclusive business that we can all be proud of. We believe that diversity is a critical part of this. We aim to remove barriers so that people with different experiences and from different backgrounds see us as somewhere they’d love to work.
Diversity creates more varied thinking in teams, where people come together with different backgrounds and experiences, creating an environment of debate, challenge, idea generation and innovation. There is no shortage of evidence to support this, but this is not the reason we want diversity. We want a diverse business because we believe that it’s the right and fairest thing to do from a social and moral perspective.
We are passionately committed to hiring diverse candidates from different backgrounds for work placements, internships and permanent roles. Our leaders feel fully accountable for making a difference in our industry when it comes to how we hire - Finance and Technology continues to be closed off to so many people, and we wish to change that.
We regularly pursue outreach activities which address the underrepresented groups in finance and technology. This includes female, Black and other minorities, as well as those from low income households who have grown up with limited educational opportunities available to them. Our work here includes supporting students through events, partnerships, and work insight days.
We also work hard to create a culture and an environment that is respectful, kind and enjoyable - one that everyone can succeed in. We all have biases (many unconscious and deep rooted) that create attitudes and beliefs. These attitudes and beliefs might, even if accidental, reinforce stereotypes that only serve to disconnect people from feeling included. We seek feedback on what it’s like to work at Quadrature and train our managers on how to build healthy, trusting teams.
Modern Slavery
We are committed to preventing the existence of modern slavery within our supply chain or any part of our business. We have a zero-tolerance approach to slavery and human trafficking in any form and we expect our suppliers and service providers to also meet these standards. You can read more about our approach to preventing modern slavery here.