The LVMH group collaborates with ValueCo, the start-up that is changing the ESG rating lines

ValueCo, the first SaaS platform for ESG score aggregation, is now collaborating with the LVMH group. Thanks to its access to the platform, LVMH now benefits from in-depth analyses to understand and manage its strategy with respect to its investors.

This deal with one of the largest European market capitalizations marks an important step for the FinTech founded by Mariem Mhadhbi and Mathieu Joubrel. These two committed engineers joined forces two years ago with the aim to bring more transparency and comparability to ESG and create systematic market feedback from investors to companies. Their goal is to make ESG assessment transparent and comparable, through a platform aggregating the internal opinions of asset managers.

Trusted by more than 40 asset managers with nearly €5.5 trillion in assets under management, ValueCo provides listed issuers with market sentiment on their ESG performance. They are able to understand their strengths and weaknesses in each of the pillars E, S and G, and to know what market proportion perceives them as a responsible investment. This vision guides not only their financial and extra-financial strategies, but also the quality of their exchanges with their shareholders on ESG issues.

"Today investors conduct their own analysis to make investment decisions, but they generally keep their assessment internal. This makes it difficult to determine what market as a whole thinks. ESG remains an implicit parameter and we want to make it explicit, in order to establish it’s market value. Thus, we objectify ESG and bring transparency and comparability into the ecosystem.” Explains Mariem Mhadhbi, co-founder and CEO of ValueCo.

This collaboration between ValueCo and LVMH embodies a vision of finance in transition. In the regulatory context, increasingly demanding with the arrival of the CSRD, management tools like ValueCo provide real support for listed issuers seeking reliable and transparent ESG benchmarks.

Julie Coulot, ESG Investor Manager at LVMH, shares this ambitious vision seeking to bridge the gap between knowledge of the market's financial and extra-financial expectations. She says: “We are strengthening our discussions with ESG investors but we do not have access to their assessment of our commitments. Rating agencies, despite being often used, offer limited correlation. The overall ESG perception, although inevitable today, remains out of our reach. This is why I was drawn to ValueCo’s solution, offering an informed vision for our future actions with ESG investors.”

ValueCo is already in the testing phase of its next functionality to support its clients in taking ESG issues into account: contribution analysis. Listed issuers need to better understand investor expectations, but also to identify the best levers to position themselves as leaders. Contribution analysis allows companies like LVMH to understand in details which indicators contribute positively or negatively to their ESG performance in order to prioritize their improvement opportunities and optimally allocate their resources.

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