The Lloyd’s Register Foundation, which has an annual income of £951m, has become the largest charity to file accounts with the Charity Commission.
The foundation, which funds science, education and research, is the owner of Lloyd’s Register, a safety assessment organisation which dates back to 1760, when it existed to facilitate agreements between insurers and ship owners.
Lloyd’s Register was previously a community benefit society, a type of exempt charity, but has now converted into two entities – a limited company, and a registered charity which owns all the shares in the company.
A spokesman for the group said it had decided to convert to the current structure following changes introduced in the 2006 Charities Act, which required exempt charities to have a principal regulator.
The foundation has also taken over another charity, the Lloyd’s Register Educational Trust, which was previously funded by Lloyd’s Register.
The foundation came into existence on 11 January last year, but has only now appeared as the largest organisation on the register after filing its first accounts last month, covering the period to 30 June 2013.
The charity has appointed a new director, Professor Richard Clegg. Richard Sadler, previously the chief executive of the community benefit society, continues as chief executive of the operating group Lloyd's Register Group Ltd, and has become the second highest paid employee in the charity sector with an income of £790,000 a year.
The charity appears so large because Lloyd’s Register is effectively its trading subsidiary, and all the £920m income of the company appears on the charity’s consolidated statement of financial activities.
But the income of the actual charity is much smaller; its first set of accounts show that in six months it received £7.8m in gift aided profits from the company, together with another £6.3m from its investment portfolio. It disbursed just £8.1m in grants, although a spokesman said that it expected to make significantly larger disbursements in future years.
Previously the largest charity on the register was the British Council, which has an annual income of £781m.
