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The world’s biggest corporate environmental transparency non-profit group CDP has sold a majority stake in its core operations to private equity firm Permira.
The group was a forerunner in setting a bar for voluntary reporting when it was founded as the Carbon Disclosure Project in 2000, and has been used since then by investors, banks and companies to gather information about climate, water and other ecological risks across sectors and supply chains.
The deal will see the group split in two, with the CDP Foundation to operate as an independent charity that will in turn hold a minority stake in the newly commercial business controlled by Permira.
CDP at present charges an administration fee to self-reporting businesses, as well as fees for its data licences and memberships.
The deal, expected to close by the end of the year, marks the end of more than two decades of non-profit work aimed at providing standardised environmental data to financial markets and stakeholders.
CDP and Permira declined to disclose the size of the deal or ownership breakdown.
Chief executive Sherry Madera, who will stay at the new CDP commercial business, said it would allow investment in new tools and data services, providing more information for users.
“If you think about HSBC, if you think about Citibank . . . what they’re saying is that they need more and better information in order to be able to assess things like resilience, physical risk, looking at water usage and how [these are] going to affect valuations and business decisions going forward,” she said. “That is what the ecosystem wants us to do now.”
Permira said the move marked the first investment under its energy transition strategy. Two years ago, it said it had appointed a dedicated team to invest across the energy transition, as the world moved from burning fossil fuels towards clean energy.
The private equity firm said that as environmental risk reshaped global supply chains and investment decisions, “the need for trusted data has never been greater”.
Financial organisations with more than a quarter of global institutional assets used CDP data as part of investment and lending decisions, the groups said. Businesses often ask companies in their supply chain to disclose their reporting to CDP, in an attempt to understand the wider risks in their operations.
The self-reported data is assigned scores based on the information provided. CDP does not vet the information, but says that organisations are asked for independent verification as best practice and this is required to receive the highest scores.
Madera said there were no immediate plans to increase prices for its service.
Under the terms of the deal, the foundation would receive a portion of “proceeds from this transaction”, said Madera, although she declined to say how much.
CDP Foundation would continue to operate through the current network of charities, led by CDP Worldwide, a charitable company limited by guarantee and registered in the UK.
It would continue to focus on “advancing science-led environmental disclosure” and would not receive income from the new commercial business.
In 2023, another leading green standards non-profit group, the Science Based Targets Initiative — which assesses voluntary corporate climate plans’ alignment with global warming targets — also split into a standalone UK company and a non-profit umbrella body.
