The financial geography of sustainability data: a mapping exercise of the spatial dimension of the ESG information industry

ABSTRACT

This FinVis explores the evolving landscape of environmental, social and governance (ESG) information providers, focusing on their geographical distribution and consolidation dynamics. Utilising a novel dataset of 143 ESG firms, the article figure maps the headquarters and merger and acquisition (M&A) interactions across three time periods. The findings reveal the dominance of Europe and North America, which concentrate the ownership of over 80% of active firms. In particular, the acquisition trends depict North America's growing influence in the ESG information industry.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental, social and governance (ESG)
• sustainable finance
• corporate social responsibility (CSR)
• socially responsible investment
• mergers and aquisitions
• sustainability data

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author is grateful to Lukas Böhm, who arranged the different plots in a combined visualisation and who provided valuable inputs to increase the interpretability of the plots. In addition, I would like to express my gratitude to Xinke Gu, who worked on the revised version of the dataset and to Guillaume Beaumier, who provided valuable comments for the revision.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften: [Grant Number KON-22-031].