We’re delighted to report that the Bridges Sustainable Growth Funds have made a majority investment into Evora Global, a UK consultancy that helps clients around the globe to improve the sustainability and reduce their climate risk of their real estate portfolios.

Founded in 2011 by Chris Bennett, Ed Gabbitas and Paul Sutcliffe, Evora has grown rapidly in recent years, following the addition of key senior hires and as demand for action on sustainable finance and climate risk has risen up the agenda of corporations generally. The company, which now has over 200 staff, provides consultancy services to many of the biggest names in global real estate investment, and has developed its own software, SIERA, to help its clients make better investment decisions around sustainability.

MSCI, the global financial information business, and Farview Equity Partners, a team of specialist software investors, are also investing in Evora as part of this investment round, and will both take board seats alongside Bridges. The mission-critical decision-support tools, insights and market access provided by the consortium will further aid Evora’s growth, and maximise the value of its ESG and climate solutions to the global real asset investment community.

Evora has a strong commitment to sustainability and impact, and specifically chose to partner with Bridges because of our market-leading credentials in this area (including our status as a ‘Best for the World’ B Corp). In addition, our track record as one of the UK’s leading investors in sustainable real estate was also critical in understanding this market and establishing our credentials as a partner of choice.

Chris Bennett, Founder and Managing Director of Evora, said:
“When we founded this business over a decade ago, people didn’t want to talk about climate risk or sustainability. It was a real battle to even get a meeting. Now, we are experiencing huge demand for our services globally as the world has woken up to the risks of climate change. Our client base is made up of leading asset managers and owners, and they have been asking us to support them globally. This funding enhances our ability to support them and to improve our technology and advisory services globally.

“We wanted investors who were aligned with our vision. We had a lot of options, but Bridges really stood out for its commitment to sustainability and impact investing, as well as being a B Corp. Working with MSCI will broaden our ability to drive positive impact, helping our clients with their sustainable development goals while widening our global reach. Farview’s experience of growing enterprise technology companies will transform our SIERA software and support its international growth.”

Emma Thorne, Partner at Bridges, said:
“Real estate is a significant contributor to global carbon emissions, so Evora’s tools and services can play an important role in reducing emissions and building a more sustainable economy. We think there’s a significant commercial and impact opportunity here. So we’re excited to partner with this excellent team and help the business scale, drawing on Bridges’ 20 years’ experience of helping ambitious companies to accelerate their growth and achieve more impact.”

René Veerman, Head of Real Assets, MSCI, added:
“High quality data is an essential part of commercial real asset investors’ ability to develop effective strategies, built upon the in-depth evaluation of portfolio and asset climate risk. The combination of Evora’s tools for climate data management and advisory services, together with MSCI’s robust climate risk models and indexes, will help to improve the flow of critical decision data and accelerate the adoption of climate standards and thereby to strengthen the global real asset investment process. MSCI is committed to providing critical decision support tools that help investment managers to build better portfolios and, in this collaboration with Evora, we will better serve the evolving needs of our shared and new clients.”

Guy Sochovsky, Partner, Farview, said:
“We believe meeting the demands of climate change across global real estate portfolios will continue to need powerful software tools able to both track environmental impact and project future economic risks. SIERA has many of the right ingredients around data quality and deep industry understanding to enable these features within its software. We are excited to have the opportunity to partner with the team at the company to help realise that vision for the benefit of all stakeholders.”

Bridges was advised by Alantra (corporate finance) and Addleshaw Goddard (legal). Polestar Corporate Finance advised Evora Global. 

Notes

About Evora Global
Evora Global works with clients to improve their sustainability and reduce their climate risk. Its clients include many of the biggest names in global real estate, including Invesco Real Estate, Hines and M&G. The company provides consultancy services and has developed its own software, SIERA, which enables its clients to make investment decisions regarding climate change and sustainability. Founded in 2011 by Chris Bennett, Ed Gabbitas and Paul Sutcliffe, the company now has over 200 staff.

About MSCI
MSCI is a leading provider of critical decision support tools and services for the global investment community. With over 50 years of expertise in research, data, and technology, we power better investment decisions by enabling clients to understand and analyse key drivers of risk and return and confidently build more effective portfolios. We create industry-leading research-enhanced solutions that clients use to gain insight into and improve transparency across the investment process.

About Farview Equity Partners
Farview Equity Partners specialises in investing in growth-oriented enterprise technology companies in Europe. Founded in 2019, Farview’s mission is to empower European enterprise and financial technology companies to grow beyond their current horizons. Farview invests exclusively in SaaS; technology-enabled information and business services; and financial technology companies. The firm makes both minority and control investments that range from €15 to €50 million. In addition to capital, Farview provides targeted support to its portfolio companies, leveraging its deep network, extensive resources and pattern recognition of past successes to help drive differentiated outcomes.