The booming business of green finance is being led by an unlikely group of companies that sits at the heart of the financial system.
The giant firms that audit the books, rate the bonds, advise on proxy voting and categorize the world’s companies are spending billions to boost their climate-related operations. That could accelerate the shift away from fossil fuels but could also create a new set of conflicts of interest for industries that struggled to manage them in the past.
In the past two years, U.S. firms in the financial-services sector have spent more than $3.5 billion buying green-ratings companies and data providers, a review by The Wall Street Journal found. The Big Four audit firms are also moving into the environmental, social and governance, or ESG, arena. PricewaterhouseCoopers last year said ESG was a focus of its $12 billion investment plan.
When the…
