Wellcome Trust Annual Report and Financial Statements 2019 Is © the Wellcome Trust and Is Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 UK
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Annual Report and Financial Statements 2019 Table of contents Report from Chair 3 Report from Director 5 Trustee’s Report 7 What we do 8 Review of Charitable Activities 9 Review of Investment Activities 21 Financial Review 31 Structure and Governance 36 Social Responsibility 40 Risk Management 42 Remuneration Report 44 Remuneration Committee Report 46 Nomination Committee Report 47 Investment Committee Report 48 Audit and Risk Committee Report 49 Independent Auditor’s Report 52 Financial Statements 61 Consolidated Statement of Financial Activities 62 Consolidated Balance Sheet 63 Statement of Financial Activities of the Trust 64 Balance Sheet of the Trust 65 Consolidated Cash Flow Statement 66 Notes to the Financial Statements 67 Alternative Performance Measures and Key Performance Indicators 114 Glossary of Terms 115 Reference and Administrative Details 116 Table of Contents Wellcome Trust Annual Report 2019 | 2 Report from Chair During my tenure at Wellcome, which ends in The macro environment is increasingly challenging, 2020, I count myself lucky to have had the which has created volatility in financial markets. opportunity to meet inspiring people from a rich Q4 2018 was a very difficult quarter, but the diversity of sectors, backgrounds, specialisms resumption of interest rate cuts by the US Federal and scientific fields. Reserve underpinned another year of gains for our portfolio. We recognise that the cycle is extended, Wellcome’s achievements belong to the people and that the portfolio is likely to face more who work here and to the people we fund – it is challenging times ahead. a partnership that continues to grow stronger, more influential and more ambitious, spurred by The team is working hard to ensure that our independence. Not relying on public funding Wellcome is as well placed as possible to means Wellcome can take risks that would be face more difficult times. more difficult for governments or other charities. Existing priority areas have shown the additional impact possible when Wellcome acts at scale: our vaccines priority area co-founded Coalition “ Nothing can be achieved for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI), in isolation from others.” which has now raised $780 million for developing vaccines and technologies to prevent infections such as Nipah virus and Rift Valley fever. This year, Wellcome spent £1.13 billion on This year, Wellcome-commissioned research charitable activities – this spend is much higher added to the evidence that vaccines could than last year because of the timing of significant also help to reduce drug-resistant infections, commitments but it is in line with our expectation another of our priority areas. that we will spend, on average, around £1 billion Two new priority areas were approved in 2019. a year. One will help make safe, effective and accessible Our spending level is made possible by our treatments a reality for snakebites, which currently investment portfolio, which returned 6.9% in the kill more than 120,000 people a year. The other year to 30 September 2019 or 4.9% after inflation. aims to ensure that Artificial Intelligence and data Our annualised returns over the past ten years technologies will transform research and healthcare have been 12.0%. In part, this period of strong in ways that benefit everyone. returns reflects a low starting point for asset The foundation of medical progress is science that prices after the Global Financial Crisis, and it has reveals new knowledge about human health and certainly been assisted by the actions of Central disease. Most of Wellcome’s funding goes into this Banks globally. Nonetheless, our investment vital and fundamental science, and it is difficult to team deserve credit for taking advantage of these pick out specific advances from the thousands of conditions to enable Wellcome to more than researchers we support. On pages 10 to 20, we double our funding capability. convey some of the range of this work. Not just the I would like to take this opportunity to clinician scientist, funded by Wellcome for 30 years, acknowledge our former Chief Investment who shared a Nobel prize in October 2019 for Officer, Danny Truell, who died in September. research on oxygen sensing, but also the early His management of the portfolio through career researcher setting up a lab to study how the crisis years and beyond was exceptional. wounds heal, a team of neuroscientists decoding His contributions have been pivotal to making cellular connections in the brain, and a collaboration Wellcome what it is today. at the Wellcome Sanger Institute using cutting edge genomics to personalise disease prediction for a type of chronic blood cancer. Report from Chair Wellcome Trust Annual Report 2019 | 3 There are so many more achievements we could Three Governors retired from the Board this year: celebrate. This is what makes Wellcome such Naguib Kheraj, also previously a stalwart external an exciting organisation: we see glimpses of how member of Wellcome’s Investment Committee, the world’s health could be transformed in a few Anne Johnson and Alan Brown, who all contributed years, a decade, or even a century from now. so much to Wellcome over the years. Amelia My admiration for the discipline and rigour of Fawcett, Richard Gillingwater and Cilla Snowball scientific thinking has only increased, and I have joined the Board in September 2019, and Elhadj seen great resilience to adversity among the As Sy will join in January 2020. The great wealth of scientific community. Wellcome is in an enviable commercial and non-profit expertise they bring will position of being able to fund our activities be invaluable as the Board continues to evolve ourselves, but we know how researchers after an effectiveness review in 2018, and as continually have to apply for grants and awards Wellcome develops more ambitious goals and from funders like us. It’s vital that Wellcome takes effective strategies to improve health for everyone. account of the effects that our approach to funding can have on the culture of research – not to over-state our influence, but so that we can aim for those effects to be positive. At the time of writing, researchers in the UK – Eliza Manningham-Buller and across the European Union – need all their Chair, Wellcome resilience during the uncertainty of Brexit. It is difficult to focus on science when you don’t know whether your international colleagues will be able to stay in your lab next year. Wellcome has been consistently clear that the UK must develop a simple, swift immigration system for researchers and technicians, keep access to EU research funding, and cooperate on regulation. This will allow cross-border scientific collaboration to continue to flourish, and help the UK maintain its reputation as a magnet for global scientific talent. Nothing can be achieved in isolation from others. I would like to thank everyone I have met and worked with at Wellcome, including Directors Mark Walport and Jeremy Farrar, and my fellow Governors who have guided, challenged and inspired me. Report from Chair Wellcome Trust Annual Report 2019 | 4 Report from Director In 1989, Peter Ratcliffe began setting up a lab at Research and innovation have most impact when Oxford University to investigate how cells sense science is a trusted part of society. Wellcome oxygen levels in the body. Wellcome awarded Global Monitor interviewed 140,000 people in him a senior fellowship award and we’ve funded 140 countries about how they think and feel him ever since. The research in his lab led to about science and major health challenges. It’s the fundamental discoveries about how the body largest ever study of its kind, and is not a resource responds to changes in oxygen levels, and about just for Wellcome – the full 2019 report and dataset related medical conditions including kidney failure. are available on our website, and I encourage all More recently, it has informed the development of scientists, policy makers and funders to make use potential new drugs for use in critical care and to of it to actively influence trust in science in your treat kidney disease, anaemia and several forms societies and communities. of cancer. Everyone at Wellcome was thrilled Such activities show the increase in Wellcome’s when it was announced that Peter would share scale and ambition over the past decade. This year, the 2019 Nobel Prize in Medicine for this work. we have been engaging with new sectors to recruit I was working in the Weatherall Institute of an outstanding chief executive for the Leap Fund, Molecular Medicine, Oxford, in the early 1990s for example. We’re now leading global responses and remember the scientists in Peter’s lab being to big health challenges, including drug-resistant so inspired – not just about their work but infections and mental health. also the culture of the lab. I am sure the positive The Wellcome Success Framework ties all our environment he created there contributed to all work together so we can assess how well we’re their success and should be celebrated along achieving our mission of improving health. As well with the resulting research. as being a tool to measure progress, it can be used to ensure we’re making the most of Wellcome’s “ We need science, innovation resources, expertise and relationships with people and society working together we fund, our partners and networks. This year, the Wellcome Success Framework to improve health for everyone” informed a significant review of how we fund science. As we have changed in recent years, Whether basic research into cellular oxygen- so too have the research enterprise and the sensing in Oxford, or demonstrating the health challenges we face. It’s time to take stock, effectiveness of a vaccine programme to prevent respond to those changes and set out exactly diarrhoeal disease in Malawi, it’s ideas and people what we hope to achieve through that funding.