$200m investment to globalise corporate sustainability

GP Bullhound acted as exclusive financial advisor to EcoVadis on a USD200m growth investment from CVC Growth Partners.

EcoVadis is the world’s leading provider of business sustainability ratings, intelligence and collaborative performance improvement tools for global supply chains. ESG (*) ratings accelerate the transformation of business practices to improve climate change and human rights issues.

Industry leaders such as Johnson & Johnson, Verizon, L’Oréal, Subway, Nestlé, Salesforce, Michelin and BASF are among the more than 450 enterprises relying on EcoVadis’ supplier ratings and engagement platform to evaluate and improve environmental and social performance across their global supply chains. Today, EcoVadis’ network of assessed companies tops 60,000 across 155 countries.

This is the largest transaction (**) in the ESG space, and the largest equity fundraising in France in Enterprise Software, to date. The transaction is expected to close in Q1 2020 following regulatory approvals.

EcoVadis plans to leverage the funding to further expand its global presence, continue to invest in its technology platform, sustainability intelligence solutions and network of rated companies.

Frédéric Trinel, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Ecovadis, said: “CVC’s global network and reach will play a critical role in helping us scale and change the way businesses operate. GP Bullhound has again been a fantastic advisory partner to us, advising expertly on the range of options open to us and delivering the ideal transaction to continue our mission.”

Manish Madhvani, Managing Partner at GP Bullhound, and Guillaume Bonneton, Partner, added: “We are thrilled to have helped EcoVadis again in finding the right financial partner to match the company’s ambition and potential. We are confident that EcoVadis will now accelerate its rapid global expansion and cement its position as the standard for business sustainability ratings worldwide.”

This transaction is a further testament to GP Bullhound’s expertise in software, with 12 transactions completed in the last 12 months globally – 4 in France – including the investment of Orange Digital Ventures in InterCloud, the investment of Apax Digital in Signavio, the sale of Budget Insight to Arkéa, the investment of Bessemer into Mambu among many others. This is also another testament to the firm’s growing presence in the French market.