Bridges Fund Management, MSCI and Farview Equity are backing the business to advance sustainable development goals in the global real estate industry
EVORA Global (“EVORA”), a British company which works with influential names in real estate, has gained substantial backing from international investors in a funding round led by Bridges Fund Management, a specialist sustainable and impact investor.
Founded in 2011, EVORA helps real estate companies with their ESG strategies, sustainable finance and climate risk management and disclosure, both through advisory services and use of its software, SIERA.
EVORAalready has a large roster of major clients, including Invesco Real Estate, Hines and M&G.
SIERA currently holds ESG data for over 8000 major buildings globally.
The equity investment round will enable EVORA to expand its offering to support clients globally, while further developing its tech platform.
The investment includes support from MSCI and Farview Equity which, along with Bridges, will each take a seat on the EVORA board. The mission critical decision support tools, insights and market access provided by the consortium will further aid the business’ growth and maximise the value of its ESG and climate solutions to the global real asset investment community.
EVORA, founded by Chris Bennett, Paul Sutcliffe and Ed Gabbitas, has rapidly grown over the past two 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 has over 200 staff.
“When we founded this business over a decade ago,” said Bennett, “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.”
Charlie Whelan, who headed up Polestar’s team, said:
“The thorough process we ran attracted interest from across the globe and different sectors. In Bridges, Farview and MSCI, Chris, Paul and Ed have found the perfect mix of capital and knowledge to scale EVORA into the globe’s preeminent real asset provider for managed services and software”.
Emma Thorne, Partner at Bridges, said about the investment:
“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.”
