Canada’s Jantzi Research and Europe’s Sustainalytics to merge

Canada’s Jantzi Research and Sustainalytics, the Amsterdam-based consortium of European ESG research houses, have announced they are to merge, continuing a rapid pace of consolidation amongst SRI research houses. The new entity will operate globally as Sustainalytics and as Jantzi-Sustainalytics in North America. The deal comes just ten months after Sustainalytics was created through the merger of the former entities of Dutch Sustainability Research (DSR), Scoris (Germany) and Analistas Internacionales en Sostenibilidad – AIS (Spain). That move followed the disbanding in September, 2008 of SiRi Company, the former alliance of global ESG providers, which included Centre Info in Switzerland, KLD Research & Analytics in the US, Jantzi Research in Canada and PIRC in the UK. Prior to the latest merger with Jantzi, Sustainalytics had been sourcing company research within the Americas and Asia-Pacific in partnership with Jantzi, KLD and SIRIS in Australia. Sustainalytics is backed byTriodos Bank, Fortis MeesPierson and PGGM, the Dutch pension fund, and is understood to be developing a new online ESG research platform. Canada’s Jantzi Research carries out SRI research for some of North America’s largest institutional investors and also runs SRI indices including the Jantzi Social Index and the joint KLD/Jantzi Global Environmental Index series. Its president and founder, Michael Jantzi, is taking up the chief executive officer role at the new combined Sustainalytics. Ronald Lubberts, managing director of Sustainalytics in Europe will keep the same respective post, while Bob Mann, Janzti Research’s managing director in North America stays in the same post for Jantzi-Sustainalytics.
Michael Jantzi said: “This merger was the logical progression of our past partnership. Together we offer an unmatched understanding of the market and can provide more extensive coverage of companies globally combined with deeper sector analysis.”