ESG in IPOs – Marie Freier (IPO Stories, Ep. 5)

Transcript

Per: Today we’ll talk with Marie Freier, who is Global co-head of Sustainable Investment Banking at Barclays. Marie and her team advise public and private companies on their ESG strategy and help them raise funds to support their sustainability strategy. With Marie, we discussed importance of ESG for investors, the need for further ESG disclosure in IPO processes and how companies providing solutions to the energy transition raise capital. At Amundsen Investment Management we take ESG considerations into account in our IPO research and we aim to share our views and feedback early in the process so that companies can be ready for the increased scrutiny by public investors.

We think that it’s important for companies to start their work on ESG transparency early to ensure investors get the information they need as they’re looking at the IPO. If not, they risk missing out on engaging with the wider audience of investors.

Before we start, we’d like to remind our listeners that our discussion is not financial advice nor an investment or accommodation nor so solicitation to buy or sell any financial instrument or an offer for financial services or any other transaction. Information contained in the recording have no contractual value and are destined for an information purpose only Amundsen Investment Management and the participants on this podcast may have holdings in the companys being discussed.

Marie, thank you very much for joining us today. Can you tell us a bit about what led you to your current role advising companies on sustainability matters within the investment bank?

Marie: Thank you so much for having me, indeed. I’m global co-head of Sustainable and Impact Banking at Barclays, which is quite a mouthful. We sit in the investment bank and we’re somewhat unusual that we are a dedicated global team and really looking at ESG sustainability along two mandates. One is to help emerging growth companies scale, advise them, help them raise capital and whether that’s initially by replacement or then help them go public, clean tech companies, but also more broadly businesses providing sustainability products or solutions in areas like hydrogen EV charging, sustainable building materials, et cetera.

We also have a separate team of bankers who provide ESG advisory services for our larger existing clients. Really providing strategic advice to the management teams of these companies around ESG at ESG ratings, disclosures, and of course offer very relevant in the context of an IPO or M&A for instance. I was actually previously Barclay’s Global head of ESG research leading our integration efforts.

It was really in that role that I came across questions like, how well prepared are companies coming to the market? How substantive are their IPO disclosures around ESG? They’re common themes of course in both roles, but it’s been a very interesting change in perspective as well, I would say, really looking at things from more of a distance to now working very closely with the companies.

Per: Now, if you look at the investor landscape, how has this evolved in terms of ESG? It feels like almost all European investor you have today is ESG focused, but that’s changed quite a lot over the last few years.

Marie: I think that’s exactly it. It has come a very long way, but what’s crazy is how quickly and how much it is still changing on go forward look. I think one important thing to always remember as a starting point is that ESG funds are of course not homogenous. They’re quite disparate in nature because they express different preferences or priorities or goals from the end investors. I think that’s something that tends to be underappreciated or crossed over too many times that there is really a spectrum of ESG investing.

Then, secondly, it’s probably worth reflecting on the biggest historic problem that ESG investors have faced, namely the paucity of good comparable ESG information and data to help inform their investment decision making. That’s of course why regulators stepped in led by Europe arguably to require more and better disclosures from companies. Of course investors are also subject to regulation, and huge apologies to those listeners, very familiar.

Of course we have to mention the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, the SFDR, with level one coming into effect in March 2021, but requiring asset managers and other financial markets participants to make certain ESG disclosures, really aiming to create a level playing field. Basically, if your father says it’s an ESG fund, tell us what that means, but as many listeners will know, what’s been interesting to observe is how the ESG landscape, the market has really interpreted and used this regulation and practice.

From not something that was intended to be disclosure regulation really just about being transparent, effectively being used as a labeling tool, as a marketing tool. Again, this is probably very familiar with so-called article 8 or 9 funds but worth touching on. Given how much this is playing a role now in the market and really part of the conversation.

Article 8 and 9 products as distinct from Article 6, what do we mean by that? Massively oversimplifying but saying that if an Article 6 fund or product would be expected not to be marketing itself as an ESG fund and the Article 8 fund then defined as a fund which promotes among other characteristics, environmental and social. Not necessarily having that as an overarching objective, which is then the Article 9 product, what you might think of as an impact product. A fund that really aims to make a positive impact, the contribution to society and/or the environment through its investments and so has that additional objective at its core.

What’s interesting as well, based on the feedback that I’ve heard, and I wonder if you agree that really it’s been immense commercial pressure and what felt like a commercial imperative for many asset managers to classify or identify as many of their fund strategies as possible as Article 8 or even Article 9, which has been very challenging due to a lack of clarity around the regulation itself. Things like minimum standards, but also concerns about being accused of greenwashing. I’m sure we could spend a lot of this podcast discussing just the SFDR and its complexities, but hopefully that gives a sense of how long a journey we’ve been on especially in Europe and where we come to over the last couple of years.

Per: I think it’s difficult from an institutional investor perspective, if you’re an asset owner. I think most European asset owners would consider themselves to be taking ESG into account, and that also has implications for the funds and the external managers that they select. It’s definitely driven a change in how institutional investors allocate to fund managers, but in the US obviously, on the one hand, some institutions that are quite forward leaning in terms of ESG. On the other hand, there’s been a backlash at the political level. Do you feel like there’s less focus for managers in the us?

Marie: It’s a really great question. I definitely think there’s differences given the very public anti-ESG movement in the US, we have to ask ourselves what underlies that. I sometimes think that if you polled a 100 market participants in Europe and the US and you ask them about stakeholder versus shareholder capitalism or primacy I think you would get quite different answers. There is a deeply rooted difference in understanding or in culture around how we think markets work or what their purpose is. Having said that, do we think it goes away? I don’t think so.

I think it’s really here to stay. Secondly, I don’t think that actually in practice businesses or market participants in the US aren’t focused on these topics. I think they’re actually very focused and very pragmatic about addressing issues like the energy transition or social issues in particular. The IRA, the inflation reduction Act of course comes to mind, arguably the most important piece of climate legislation that we see globally. Of course the term ESG is nowhere to be heard or seen, I think there’s also something here around labels that have become very sensitive in that of politicized context.

Per: With these ESGs it’s taking so much importance, especially in Europe. What does this really mean in terms of the disclosure that investors need to see before making a new investment? We’re going to talk about IPOs, but just in general, what do investors expect?

Marie: I think that’s a great point, and the biggest change is just how much more they are expecting. We talked about the historic paucity of information, huge efforts have been made, especially in the last couple of years, both by companies to really measure and disclose aspects of their businesses that maybe they haven’t done historically. By the way, not just measure but also they need to pressure test these parts of their business, these data points in a way maybe historically didn’t.

Also huge efforts by the investment community to capture those data points, to build tools and build frameworks or use external frameworks to benchmark and assess companies and potential investments on these dimensions and to really pull them through in their decision making.

Per: Do you think investors are really seeing the risk aspect there? For example the exposure of a company to changing regulations or physical climate risks and that’s what they want to measure. Are they looking at it as opportunities for companies that are leading to take market share or to develop a sustainable growth plan?

Marie: Great question. Somewhat unhelpfully, I would like to say both, so ultimately I’m definitely an optimist. I think it has to be the opportunity camp, but I think also it depends a little bit what we mean. If we mean ESG integration, then looking at ESG considerations is arguably just another or an additional lens on a company. It should allow a potential investor to fundamentally better understand its business, how well it’s being run, and its future prospects.

I think you are right that, historically, often the risks have been the ones that have been quantified and have maybe also gotten the attention of senior leadership teams. Of course understanding a company, it’s prospects, better should also allow us to identify opportunities better. Again, I think there is also, on the flip side, that more constructive aspect here. Then lastly, I should also say, and of course, this is the world I work in now that we see a lot of opportunities in a pure play sense.

Thinking about the wider energy transition and companies who may lose in terms of profitability or relevance, but on the flip side, there’s new businesses emerging as winners, companies really providing those solutions, new technologies or otherwise to the market. I do think there’s the opportunity aspect there as well.

Per: When evaluating this, we know a lot of fund managers have started to look at ESG scores from providers such as MSCI, Sustainalytics, S&P. How important are these today versus internal ESG analysis that the portfolio managers could do themselves?

Marie: I think you’re right. Love them or hate them, ESG scores or ratings have just become a fixed part of the ESG ecosystem and a part of the wider capital markets fabric. Yes, they’re very important. I’ve personally spent countless hours speaking to management teams, frustrated management teams often, who are wrestling with these ratings to understand them, to compare them to each other, frustrated because of maybe inaccuracies or elements that were perhaps out of date. Taking half a step back, let’s just remind ourselves what they are, but also really importantly, what are they not.

Of course they are not the same as credit ratings. They’re typically produced by ESG information providers. Two names or three that are perhaps the most well-known are of course Sustainalytics owned by Morningstar, but also MSCI or S&P. They really provide an overall view and overall indication of the ESG profile or characteristics of a company and in particular of the ESG risks a company’s exposed to and how well that company is managing those risks. ESG ratings are also typically unsolicited, focus on listed companies, and are typically investor-pay subscription models and updated annually. Across all of these dimensions, somewhat different from credit ratings.

Per: You’re saying love them or hate them, but I actually think they’re going to matter even more in the future because if you look at the passive investing landscape, obviously they’re the easiest way to convert a very large AUM base to an ESG aware AUM base is to convert your funds to passive funds that are aligned to an ESG score. I think that’s going to matter.

Marie: I think that’s right. I completely agree. They just lend themselves, even though they’re somewhat binary, that one-stop-shop view of a company makes it a very easy tool to implement its strategies. I’ve definitely spoken to many fund managers or analysts who are somewhat frustrated that that is maybe the most common tool that both their management teams but also their clients default to because they’re not perfect. They’re typically, as we said, only updated annually. At the core, they’re not forward-looking, and that’s personally one of the things I think is most problematic because of course investing should really be about anticipating what is yet to come

Per: For a company to achieve a good ESG score, once they’re listed, what’s most important? Is it transparency about all the different ESG metrics or is it performance on those metrics? In that case, is it performance in general or within a sector? How do you think about that?

Marie: The complexity of your question alone highlights how complicated this is. I think the very oversimplified but short answer is transparency. More is simply more. The more you can disclose, the better. In many of these ratings processes, they actually explicitly reward companies for providing more information, or penalize gaps and disclosures. I think that that stands. Secondly, I would observe, of course the most common criticism of ESG ratings is the lack of correlation between them as opposed to credit ratings. Personally, I’m actually less troubled about that, at least conceptually, because of course two assessments may vary, especially if they’re looking at a company along the lines of different criteria or they’re weighting those differently.

Theoretically, there could be information value in having two different ratings, but of course, it gets tricky if you don’t know why they’re different. It’s really all about understanding how these ratings or score providers work and appreciating those differences. As you mentioned, for instance, and when it comes to performance, some of it, in some cases, it is measured relative within the sector and sometimes it is an absolute. I think understanding exactly what they are and what they’re not in this sense also is very important.

Per: I wanted to move a bit now to the IPO process. You published a report last year where you analyzed the ESG information that was made available by companies through the IPO process. On our side, we’ve also seen the same thing that there’s almost nothing. You have some companies that will publish perspectives with zero information that’s relevant to ESG, except maybe some parts about governance that have always been required, but some companies have started publishing a bit more information. Some will publish a score, some will publish their emissions, et cetera. Why do you not think there’s any information?

Marie: It was a really interesting exercise. Very quickly, we should mention, as you say, it was published last year. It was based on documents from the previous calendar year. Hopefully, we’ve come a little away, but I think it broadly still stands and we were very surprised not having expected a lot by how little information was available, consistency. Why? Candidly, I think the bottom line is simply this, that the companies either did not know or did not believe it was important enough. Then the question is, why? Why did they not believe that it should be a priority?

In speaking to some of the companies directly, their feedback was that, especially in these early look investor meetings, and in particular in the US, they simply did not get asked about it, or at least not very frequently. I do remember one company in particular sharing that it came up once in 80-plus investor meetings. Secondly, I do also still think there’s a confusion about the fact that ESG and ESG disclosures are relevant to all companies and types of businesses. I heard that people say, “Well, we’re not really a sustainability-focused business. We’re not targeting impact funds and therefore because we’re not a pure play company, it’s not relevant to us.”

I think there’s a misunderstanding there that we need to help work through as well. Then lastly, we frequently heard about pressure management time. They run up to an IPO, just saying there simply wasn’t the bandwidth or time to deal with it. I would say arguably that brings us back to my first point, which is, if they had believed it was very important, then I’m sure the time would’ve been found.

Per: What’s the impact of all this? Do investors care about the presence or lack of ESG-related information or do they just turn a blind eye to it in the context of the IPO because they’re actually competing with other investors to get an allocation in the IPO?

Marie: It probably depends a little bit on who you are or who you ask. I would say some investors I spoke to simply can’t or won’t participate in IPO with their ESG products. It doesn’t seem to have made a difference to the success of the IPO from a demand perspective. Again, maybe that’s more of a historic thing. Speaking to market participants, and I’m sure we’ll come back to this, several ESG fund managers shared that they simply didn’t have enough information and also not enough historic information to really get them comfortable, not enough that they felt they needed to really participate.

Arguably also, of course, there haven’t been that many very large IPOs coming to the market and so perhaps they also didn’t feel they were missing out on too many critical opportunities. For universal owners, of course, it remains problematic because they don’t have that option of saying, “I’ll just wait and look at this business in a couple of years.” once they’ve made more disclosures and have a rating.

Then lastly, to your point about allocations, I think my sense was that if an IPO was relevant enough and allocations became a concern that perhaps in some instances one might be more flexible, at least if things weren’t set out in a hard and fast way in a framework. Of course the market’s been somewhat more quiet recently, so I guess we haven’t had that many test cases.

Per: It’s been more quiet, but as you’re saying, the companies that are pure play cleantech or in the climate change solution space have been more present over the last few years. For those companies in particular, do you feel like it’s enough for them to highlight the fact that they are contributing to the energy transition, for example, or do they still need to provide sufficient information such that fund managers can say, “Well, here are the emissions they have from the production of wind turbines or from solar panels, et cetera, and that they can make up the entire ESG framework of that company?

Marie: I agree with you. I think it’s actually that latter piece is what comes first. I think it goes back to the frameworks and tools that many investment firms have built and that their funds and strategies are linked to. They have to satisfy the requirements of those tools or frameworks and they need those inputs, to your point, for example, around emissions in particular or other minimum information that they need.

I think sometimes we have it the wrong way around. It’d be great to think about the positive impact of that business and that broader sense of purpose, but that won’t do as much good if we can’t satisfy those other requirements around key pieces of information and data that are set down and those frameworks and strategies.

Per: When do you think is actually the right time for a company to start preparing their ESG data, for example, by publishing a sustainability report if they’re considering an IPO.

Marie: Can I say, now? I think that would be the short answer. I think it brings us back to what we said earlier, that what I heard from several market participants is that really they would be looking for two or three years-worth of information to really get a feel for a company, especially when it comes to ESG factors. I think you really, as a company, want to make sure you’re starting early in both understanding and demonstrating that this is core to your business.

Again, as usual, starting with a materiality assessment, ensuring that you’ve sat down and you’ve identified which ESG considerations are actually most relevant to your business and what your various initiatives might be in terms of addressing those or furthering those. Again, you don’t do that in a mad rush in the run up to an IPO. That’s really, I think, something you want to be doing with a due consideration ahead of time. I actually think it can only be a good thing if you give yourself a couple of years-worth of runway.

Per: Oh, I completely agree. We’ve seen this from some of the leading companies in the space. We saw, for example, with Azelis that IPO in September, 2021, that I published sustainability report about six weeks before the IPO, but at least to give the investors some time to have a look at it. Some companies are now looking to IPO in the future. For example, Visma in Norway, which is a State and it’s targeting an IPO this year or next year. They actually published an annual sustainability report for the last few years, so it’s becoming more common.

Marie: Fantastic.

Per: It’s not all companies for sure. The more they do it early, the better for them, but for the companies that have been doing this work early, do you know if it’s possible for them to get an ESG score by one of the scoring providers at the time of IPO?

Marie: Yes, it is actually, and it’s becoming much more common. We even observe in our ESG advisory works or working with companies in the lead up to the IPO that we think quite quickly it’s going to become expected, especially for larger companies. For instance, the likes of Sustainalytics and the MSCI that we mentioned earlier, offer a pre-IPO product, so you get a solicited rating, you pay for it as the company, but then you can use it in the IPO process.

Per: I think that’s helpful for some investors, especially the ones that use the scores as the basis for their framework. Now, once the IPO is done, obviously we said companies tend to not have done a lot of work on their disclosures ahead of time, but what work can they do after the IPO is done to improve their disclosures?

Marie: I think, unfortunately, a bit like what we said earlier, more is more, so the ability to disclose against some of the key frameworks, of which of course there are several, there is some consensus finding, isn’t there? Whether it’s the TCFD from a climate perspective, historically [unintelligible 00:22:54] or the go forward, the ISSB, so really working through some of those key frameworks and making sure that you are disposing against all of those already as much as you possibly can. Then over time showing progress around that as well is the most important thing that you can do.

Per: I wanted to move a bit to the EU taxonomy. The EU has introduced taxonomy as a way to direct capital towards climate solutions, if I put it correctly. Do you think it’ll really change investor interests to move more investments or public market investments into companies that are aligned to taxonomy?

Marie: On its early days, that’s the first thing I would say. Companies have started disclosing, but really we’re at the starting point. I think I saw a data point last month that about a quarter of the European companies that are in scope have really disclosed, and of course the numbers aren’t going to be anywhere near 100% aligned. I think much more realistically is going to be much more of a middle ground. I do think it will be important, as we know, it’s incredibly complex and it’s also causing a lot of anxiety, I should say.

I think lies at the heart of it, if you’re trying to identify whether every single economic activity is sustainable or not, that’s going to be just a very, very complex piece of work. I think if we look at this again in 6 to 12 months from now and we’ve got a much broader set of data points, that’s going to be really interesting to see. I think, yes it will matter, but I think for an end-investor it still won’t be as straightforward as, oh, here is a fund in which all investment companies are perfectly aligned, if that makes sense.

Per: I think it’s going to be difficult to be perfectly aligned, especially that some activities that are sustainable might actually not be aligned, sustainable in a way, but I do think that it will drive some capital flows. Because if you look at the number that needs to be published by fund managers about the alignment of their portfolio, if you want to increase that number, you should increase your investments in companies that are highly aligned such as renewable energy producers or manufacturers of electric vehicles, et cetera.

There’s also risk maybe that has the opposite effect because you could take a company that’s very sustainable in its own way, very ESG focused, such as working in healthcare for example, but that ends up actually not being aligned because that’s not a sector that’s targeted by the taxonomy. Do you think you could see some capital flows in the other way, basically, outflows?

Marie: I hope not. I hope that there will be enough clarification not to have an unattended consequence like that. We’re just from a sectoral perspective, the relevance isn’t such, but you’re right. As we’ve been working our way through this border EU regulation the last couple of years, there have been various unintended consequence. My favorite one, or at least favorite one, is shifts out of what I would call transition investing for similar reasons. It’s not the same, but similar reasons. I do share your caution about what unintended consequences may appear.

Per: Now we talk more about the [unintelligible 00:25:56] companies, Cleantech companies or renewable energy companies or manufacturer of electric vehicles. If you look at a situation 15 years ago, it seems to me like Cleantech was still very early stage. There was a lot of technology risk, a lot of regulatory risk because we didn’t know if the subsidy schemes would keep going, et cetera.

Now we have a lot of companies in that space who are rolling out solutions at very large scale and they need significant equity financing to support their growth. Do you also see that the companies that are raising capital now actually are at the further along stage and are more mature and they just need capital for expansion, or is it still that there’s a lot of companies that are quite early stage?

Marie: Great question. It’s first of all a hugely exciting space. There was so much innovation coming and there was such a huge sense of energy, dynamism in the space. I think it’s both. I do think there are some businesses now that are maturing, and as you say, that are in different place in their journey, and where we are now moving away from proof of concept and maybe even beyond a first factory to drive demand.

We’re really now moving into that production scale piece, but at the same time, of course areas like if I’m thinking about CDR carbon dioxide removal solutions, that’s a space where there’s still new things developing. I actually expect at the early stage we’ll also continue to see new tech, new green tech in the broader sense popping up. Then over time, see which of those solutions are successful.

Per: Where do these companies actually find capital? Because on the venture capital side, there’s a few funds that are focused on Cleantech, but there’s really not that many, most venture capital funds are focused more on software or tech in the broader sense. On the infrastructure side, of course there’s quite a lot of capital going after specific projects, but that’s not really funding company development. How do you see the companies raising capital?

Marie: We do actually see, on the private side, there are a number of funds, what we would call growth equity funds, maybe not just VC, so maybe a little bit later stage. I do think some of the historic Pure tech are seeing Green tech as maybe a natural evolution of what they’re doing. Definitely new funds also coming through, but you’re right, as these businesses are now developing and scaling, they’re having to move across that spectrum of capital.

We call it the green escalator. I think that given the market we’re in today versus maybe a couple of years ago, there are moments in that journey where it’s harder than others. Where a company might still have some tech risk associated with it, might still be several years out from generating revenues where they’re finding it somewhat harder to attract or to find that capital at scale than they did a couple of years ago.

Per: We’ve seen that on the public market side, that because of this gap, the bankers have definitely been coming to us with a lot of the companies that still need to raise quite a lot of capital before being profitable. They find that actually the public markets are a good way to be there, especially if there’s a very high CapEx need in it to build factories or rollout industrial strategy, which is not typically what venture capital is active in.

Now, if you think of that impact, one of my thinking is that when you buy shares on the secondary markets, it’s quite difficult to have any meaningful impact on non-companies because you’re a minority investor. You can vote of course, but it’s going to be a very small share of the vote, but if you actually do provide capital to the companies through an IPO or capital raise, that actually helps that company realize its growth plans, hire people, build assets. That has significantly more impact than buying in the market. What do you think about it?

Marie: It’s a really interesting question. I’ve never quite thought about it quite that way. I think you’re right. Of course, even on the private side, a lot of these funds as part of their investment take an active position, so they would have a seat on the board as well. It’d really be very engaged with helping the business develop, making connections, helping them develop their business plan. You’re right, I think that’s a very tangible, very real way of having a positive impact through these companies by helping them scale and bring those clean tech solutions to the market.

For instance, that might be helping other legacy economy companies decarbonize much faster than they could have without them. Of course we know that many of those industries are very much relying in their net zero strategies on those technologies and on the cost of those solutions coming down. I think that’s a really interesting way of thinking about it.

Per: Then there’s a challenge to that, which is you were saying Article 8 to Article 9 funds, a lot of them don’t participate in IPOS. We actually did a study ourselves of the 150 largest Article 9 funds in Europe and I found that only 5% that really participate in more than 3 IPOS over the last 3 years, even though there’s been probably hundreds of IPOs in exactly that space. I’m just wondering the fact that ESG funds don’t really participate in IPOS because of all the constraints. Because there’s not enough ESG disclosure. Do you think that’s really going to be a challenge actually for clean tech companies that want to list or need to raise capital?

Marie: I think it’s definitely a missed opportunity, and that’s a great data point. It’s disturbing, but also a great data point. I think it’s a missed opportunity because I do think these companies instinctively want to target maybe in particular impact funds. That’s who they think the natural owners or investors should be. As you say, practice maybe not turning out to be that straightforward.

From my perspective, I think there’s really something for all of us to do here as market participants to help these businesses understand and bridge that gap with the investment community. What is it really that’s required in terms of information and making sure that we can have more of those funds to look at those IPOS, but also in the position that they can actually participate. Because it does feel instinctively that that would be the right outcome.

I think there’s an interesting role also for certain asset owners to play here. Whether I think about sovereign wealth funds or other financial sponsors who’ve been obviously very heavily involved with these companies and I think have an opportunity to also prepare them for that journey to the market and making sure that they’re also ready from an ESG disclosure perspective.

Per: I think as companies realize this, whereas the advisors also realize that you need to have the information ready in order to get a significant number of ESG-focused funds to participate in the capital raises. We’ll probably drive more demand there, but we do expect more success in the public markets to companies that have the strong sustainability agenda because you have more capital flows in the future. It’s just you have to get the IPO actually done. That’s not always so easy.

Marie: Indeed.

Per: What would be the best advice you could give to a management team that’s considering an IPO in the future?

Marie: Come and talk to me and my team [chuckles]. When I do think there’s something about investing the time early in understanding where the investment community now is and what the requirements are. As we said earlier, putting in place the right resourcing, which I appreciate for small companies can be challenging. Putting in place some resourcing to understand what are the frameworks. What are the kind of types of information that we need to prepare ourselves and set ourselves up to be able to disclose and share with the market and really make it an organic part of the business narrative of the communication with the market. It doesn’t feel like a last minute add-on, but really something that’s inherently part of how the company sees itself and how the business is being run.

Per: We shouldn’t make it a few slides at the end of the slide deck, but actually make it something that’s disclosed and data-based over time.

Marie: Here.

Per: To finish off, Marie, what are you most excited about within this space you’re working in?

Marie: The thing I’m absolutely most excited about is better buy-in and more momentum behind transition investing in transition finance. Really moving beyond excluding things or having a very binary view and providing support and solutions to those huge companies and to this huge task that we have ahead and helping businesses transition. I think that’s the most important thing to get us all to understand that that’s what we need to solve for.[music]

Per: Thank you very much for joining us today, Marie.

Marie: Thank you for having me.