PE firms start to get serious about ESG

摘要

The biggest US private equity shops are adding ESG expertise in an effort to bring their portfolios up to increasingly strict standards as the overall economy starts to require emissions reductions and greater transparency. Financial markets and regulators have lately focused on making sure the world's biggest publicly traded companies are following environmental, social and governance best practices, with the US Securities and Exchange Commission expected to announce disclosure rules in a few months and banks recently pledging trillions of dollars to the ESG cause. PE firms - some of which are publicly traded - have meanwhile been stepping up their own efforts to bring portfolio companies in line with emerging standards. That these firms tend to take sizeable or controlling stakes in companies gives them more influence to effect change than many other asset managers.