Datamaran, a provider of sustainability-related software, announced a collaboration with Deloitte in three European markets to provide companies with ways to better assess their environmental and social impacts and risks.
In the agreement, Deloitte will use Datamaran’s double-materiality analysis software for clients in Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium, according to a statement on Wednesday.
The deal is likely to be the first of several with Deloitte and other companies, and it comes at a time when Datamaran is signing up more clients in the US than in Europe, Chief Executive Officer Marjella Lecourt-Alma said in an interview. A big reason for that is CSRD, she said.
CSRD is short for the European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. It’s a vast set of mandatory quantitative and qualitative disclosure requirements on everything from climate to labor practices. The directive went into effect this year and is expected to be fully rolled out in 2029.
“There’s a lot of fear” tied to CSRD and it’s important that corporate leaders don’t panic, Lecourt-Alma said.
CSRD compels roughly 50,000 companies to disclose, track and measure their environmental, social and governance performance alongside annual financial reporting. It calls for the disclosure of potentially more than 1,000 data points on ESG metrics ranging from pollution to biodiversity, with more demands to be set in the future.
The broad scope of CSRD has led industry associations to plead with the European Commission to ease up on some requirements, saying they’re making EU companies less competitive.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. announced last week that it was leaving a major climate group for banks, in part because of the need to comply with mandatory reporting requirements from initiatives such as CSRD, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The firm’s departure from the Net-Zero Banking Alliance coincides with growing US pressure from the Republican Party on anything that smacks of ESG. And the challenges are almost certain to increase following President-elect Donald Trump’s victory last month.
Lecourt-Alma said the notion that ESG is dead is “click bait.” While ESG information “is all over the map,” the concepts and practices behind sustainability reporting aren’t fundamentally different than financial reporting, she said.
Datamaran recently received financing from Morgan Stanley Expansion Capital and its customers include Kraft Heinz Co., Dell Technologies Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc.
The goal is to reach the top 1,000 companies globally by the end of 2028, Lecourt-Alma said. The firm isn’t “planning to do an additional fund-raise,” she said. Instead, the idea would be to get to a stage “where we are exit-ready in the next three to five years,” either with an initial public offering or “becoming part of a larger structure,” she said.
Photo: Photographer: Benjamin Girette/Bloomberg
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