The global ESG segment is growing rapidly. As regulators worldwide continue to receive input from investors and move toward adopting ESG investing standards in their jurisdictions. To understand this shift, Traent analyzed the ESG landscape by collecting publicly available data on LinkedIn. The research focuses on all European professionals with the word “ESG” in their job titles. The data was extracted in August 2022, anonymized to be GDPR compliant, and manually cleaned by Traent’s team. As a result, the analysis consisted of the profiles of 6,204 ESG professionals located in all 27 EU countries.
ESG professionals by Country
France is the leading European country in ESG professionals, with 1,300 professionals on LinkedIn based in France. Germany is the second with 1,000 professionals and Italy is the third with 800 professionals.
According to Ab Magazine, there is a high demand for ESG professionals. Analysts, strategists, and ESG specialists are in such high demand that they receive pay raises of 30%-30% to stay with the company. every time they change jobs, their salary increases by about 25%
The ratio of large Company
To put things in perspective, Traent created a ratio of the number of large companies (250+ employees) to ESG professionals. The team discovered that Luxembourg, Denmark, and France have the highest ratios. Luxembourg leading the way with one ESG professional for every two large companies headquartered in the country. France has 1,300 ESG professionals for 3,640 large companies (3x ratio). Germany ranks low with one employee for approximately each of 12 large companies (only 1,000 ESG professionals for 11,621 large companies).
These differences could show a certain delay from certain countries in allocating dedicated resources to ESG challenges.
ESG professionals by city
Another key finding is that looking at the number of professionals per city. The cliffs say that Paris is Europe’s ESG capital, with 14% of all ESG professionals being based in the French capital. This city has many more than the second and third: Madrid and Milan, with each 5% of the total ESG professionals.
Top 20 companies by ESG team count
Finally, the company name from each profile title was mapped to rank the top 20 companies by the number of ESG professionals.
It can be seen that the top 20 is led by consulting groups, rating companies, financial companies, and asset management companies.
The rest of the list includes retail companies such as scale-ups (Zalando, Wallbox), public services companies (Poste Italiane, EDF, etc.), real estate brokers (JLL, CBRE), universities (Bocconi, University of Pisa, etc.), car manufacturers (Mercedes, Volkswagen), industrials (Siemens) and more.
This infographic aimed at shedding some light on a naissant and fast-growing industry. For everyone interested in learning how blockchain can help ESG professionals implement solutions within their company, feel free to book a session with one of Traent’s experts here or visit Traent’s website to learn more about our blockchain solution.
