Data Snapshot: Private companies lag public peers on ESG metrics

This 'should come as no surprise' given that privately held companies are newer to making progress on ESG, says a Boston Consulting Group report.

Private equity-backed businesses are lagging their public peers on key climate and diversity metrics, according to analysis by Boston Consulting Group using data from the ESG Data Convergence Initiative.

Findings show that privately held companies are behind public companies in renewable energy usage and the proportion of women on their boards.

“Many privately owned companies are newer to making progress on ESG topics than publicly owned companies. This should come as no surprise, given the increased regulatory pressure and disclosure requirements that the public markets have been subject to in recent years,” wrote the authors of the report.

The data used came from 2,000 privately owned portfolio companies and was compared with an equivalent dataset for the public markets, drawn from around 3,800 comparable public companies across 13 major stock exchanges, sourced from Refinitiv.