Press Release – Zurich, Switzerland, 21 June 2017 – Global sustainability solutions provider South Pole Group and Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (“ISS”), leading provider of end-to-end corporate governance and responsible investment solutions to the financial community, have agreed on the sale of South Pole Group’s Climate Neutral Investments (CNI) business to ISS.
The sale is testimony to South Pole Group’s pioneering position in the development of the market for climate-smart industry solutions:
Back in 2010, South Pole Group was one of the frontrunners in calculating carbon emissions of investment portfolios through its subsidiary CNI. What started as a novelty for the financial industry soon caught the attention of large investors globally: CNI established the world’s largest database of corporate climate change data and pioneered the leading, standardised investment carbon emission screening tools, resulting in the successful screening of over USD 2 trillion of assets under management for climate change implications. CNI data also enabled the financial industry to play a vital role ahead of the Paris Agreement, as a significant number of asset managers committed to increasing the transparency of their portfolio carbon footprint by joining the Montreal Pledge or the Portfolio Decarbonization Coalition. Ultimately, CNI, as the largest remaining privately owned carbon emission data provider for the finance industry, caught the attention of large financial service companies that understood the pivotal value of its data and methodologies, and South Pole Group finally decided to sell CNI to ISS.
“For our company, this is a historic milestone. From incubating the completely unknown space of investment carbon footprinting back in 2010 to growing the business and co-shaping our own market, to now finally selling the investment carbon footprinting business to a large financial industry player – it has been an absolutely amazing journey,” says Renat Heuberger, CEO of South Pole Group.
The sale of CNI will allow South Pole Group to significantly scale its global sustainability business, which comprises the full suite of environmental risk and performance assessment – including climate change, energy, water, land use and deforestation. The company will continue to be one of the world’s largest sustainability project developers and a global provider of renewable energy and carbon credits, creating value for its wide range of public, private and civil society clients.
“We believe that there are excellent opportunities to execute smart, sustainable investments in every economic situation and in every market. We are excited to take our unique combination of climate change and sustainability expertise, ESG knowledge, and detailed analyses to the next level for investors and corporates around the world,” says John Davis, Director Financial Industry, South Pole Group.
“As part of ISS, we will be able to further scale our data and analytics work on climate change-related risks and impact. Our clients and the climate will benefit tremendously: We will widen and deepen our offering across all asset classes and make it available to all investors, companies, governments, and researchers around the globe,” says Maximilian Horster, Founder of CNI, and now Managing Director at ISS Ethix Climate Change Advisory.
