Official Partners

  INVESTEC

  Title Sponsor of the Derby Festival

Investec is an international, specialist bank and asset manager that provides a diverse range of financial products and services to a select client base. Founded as a leasing company in Johannesburg in 1974, we acquired a banking licence in 1980 and were listed on the JSE Limited South Africa in 1986.

Since inception, we have expanded through a combination of substantial organic growth and a series of strategic acquisitions. Today, we have an efficient integrated international business platform, offering all our core activities in the UK and South Africa and select activities in Australia.

We are organised as a network comprising six business divisions: Asset Management, Wealth and Investment, Property Activities, Private Banking, Investment Banking and Capital Markets. Our head office provides certain group-wide integrating functions and is also responsible for our central funding and the Trade Finance business.

Our strategic goals and objectives are based on the aspiration to be recognised as a distinctive specialist bank and asset manager. This distinction is embodied in our entrepreneurial culture, which is balanced by a strong risk management discipline, client-centric approach and ability to be nimble, flexible and innovative. We do not seek to be all things to all people and aim to build well-defined, value-added businesses focused on serving the needs of select market niches where we can compete effectively.

Investec has been sponsor of the Derby Festival since 2009. This partnership has included Investec and Epsom commissioning sculptor Charlie Langton in association with Asprey to create the perpetual trophy for the Investec Derby. This is a great platform for us to showcase the longevity of our partnership with Epsom Downs. We hope this trophy becomes an icon of the great race itself.

  WILLIAM HILL 
  Official Betting Partner of the Investec Derby Festival

The partnership between Epsom Downs Racecourse and William Hill provides a platform to build betting revenues and increase interest from the betting community in the lead-up to the Investec Derby Festival each year. The partnership that unites the greatest flat race in the world and The Home of Betting offers a multi-channel betting platform; including the UK’s largest high-street shop estate, online betting via William Hill website and a dedicated new microsite TheRoadToTheDerby as well as mobile betting throught Epsom Downs’s new iPhone App.

 
   AUDEMARS PIGUET 
   Official Timekeeper of the Investec Derby Festival

 As one of the most prestigious watchmakers in the world, Audemars Piguet has a natural synergy with the Investec Derby Festival and the greatest flat race in the world, the Investec Derby. In 2010 Workforce broke the track record for the Derby, with a time of 2m31.33s. Epsom is also home to the fastest race in the world, the Investec Entrepreneurial Class ‘Dash’. The record of 53.6s to cover five furlongs still stands today, set by Indigenous in 1960, ridden by nine time Derby winning jockey, Lester Piggott. Founded in 1875 by Jules-Louis Audemars and Edward-Auguste Piguet in the Swiss village of Le Brassus, Audemars Piguet is the oldest Manufacture of Haute Horlogerie never to have left the hands of the founding families. At each stage in its history, the Manufacture has daringly adopted avant-garde techniques in order to place them in the service of traditional craftsmanship. This approach has earned it an unparalleled number of world firsts in the field of Haute Horlogerie.

   CHAMPAGNE POL ROGER 
   Official Champagne Partner of the Investec Derby Festival

Champagne Pol Roger is proud of its partnership with the Investec Derby Festival. From its foundation by the 18 year old Pol Roger in 1849, the company’s champagnes have been associated with such scenes of celebration and enjoyment in the UK. An illustrious customer, Sir Winston Churchill, named one of his race horses “Pol Roger” - she obligingly won the Black Prince Stakes at Kempton Park on Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II’s Coronation Day. More recently Pol Roger had the honour of having its Brut Réserve served at the lunch following the marriage of Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.  Pol Roger remains one of the smaller of the great Champagne houses and draws on its own vineyards or growers who have supplied Pol Roger for generations for its grapes.  Its particular style is obtained twice purifying the grape juice by cold settlement, followed by first fermentation and storage in stainless steel, to ensure the freshness and clarity of fruit flavour is preserved. The Pol Roger cellars, where secondary fermentation takes place in bottle, extend to seven kilometres in the chalk below the Avenue de Champagne  in Epernay and are among the deepest and coolest in the region.  This slows fermentation, enhancing flavour and the exquisite mousse which distinguishes its non-vintage and vintage Champagnes.  Pol Roger is one of the very last grandes marques in the hands of the founding family who remain closely involved in all stages of the business and are uncompromising in refusing to release their champagnes until they are fully mature.

   CITY AM 
   Official Newspaper of the Investec Derby Festival

City A.M. is London's first free daily business newspaper which covers financial, business news as well as sport and contemporary lifestyle. The free daily newspaper is read by over 350,000 professionals throughout the City, Canary Wharf and other areas of high business concentration. As Official Newspaper of the IDF, City AM will produce a ‘Derby Special Edition’ as its first ever Saturday newspaper. The 20-page publication will be distributed along key rail routes to the 125,000 race goers travelling to Epsom Downs for Investec Derby Day. City AM will form a key part of the racecourse’s media plan going forward, with the racecourse and its commercial partners benefiting from a variety of special features in the build up to the Blue Riband of the turf.