Teknologkåren at Lund’s Faculty of Engineering is increasing their number of stocks invested in the beer producer Brygghuset Finn. This is being criticized as a bad investment of the students’ money.
Photo: Jens Hunt.
In 2011, Teknologkåren at Lund’s Faculty of Engineering, TLTH, decided to invest in Brygghuset Finn – a beer brewery in Landskrona founded by former technology students. The first investment consisted of 20.000 SEK and one percent of the stocks in the company. Brygghuset Finn recently went through a new issue of shares – at that point, Teknologkåren decided to expand their stock portfolio. But the President of Teknologkåren, Björn Hansson, does not say much about how much money was invested or what the students will gain from this. According to him, the board of the student union evaluated the numbers in the prospectus from Brygghuset and made their decision after that.
How much are you choosing to invest?
“I don’t want to make any statement about that,” Björn Hansson says.
Acceptable investment
According to the investment policy of TLTH, there cannot be any investments in companies that sell tobacco or pornography. Nor can the companies be involved in commercial gambling. But there is no rule against investing in companies that produce alcoholic beverages.
“The board has to follow the policy. But you can have opinions about it.”
What is your opinion of the investment?
“My personal opinion isn’t important. What’s important is what the board and the members think.”
Unclear profits
The chairperson of the committee of Brygghuset Finn was a full-timer of Teknologkåren in 2005.
“He’s just an old member. He doesn’t have a direct link to the union at this time,” Björn Hansson says.
But not everyone agrees. One of Lundagård’s sources is critical to the investment and how it has been done.
“When I heard of the investment, I was very surprised and doubtful, since there can be some bias,” the source says, and says that the profit is uncertain:
“This doesn’t seem to have been handled well. They claim that it’s a good investment, but I can’t get the numbers to add up. From the outside, this looks like something done for fun. You can do things for fun with your own money, but you have to be careful when investing the students’ money.”
Björn Hansson has not heard about this criticism.
“If there is any critique of the investment, we’ll have another discussion in the board, and maybe bring this up at the council this fall,” Björn Hansson says.
Text: Casper Danielsson
Translation: Marie Eriksson
