Blackstone-Owned ESG Adviser Legence Acquires Lord Green Strategies
By Celia Young December 6, 2022 9:01 am
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Blackstone’s sustainability advisory firm Legence bought environmental, social and governance (ESG) consulting company Lord Green Strategies on Tuesday.
Lord Green will merge with Legence subsidiary RE Tech Advisors, and the deal grows Legence’s total footprint to 1.2 billion square feet of properties under management, bringing together portfolios from Invesco, Starwood Capital Group, Carlyle and ASB Real Estate spread across North America, Europe and Asia, said Deborah Cloutier, Legence’s chief sustainability officer.
“Lord Green has grown significantly over the last couple of years [and] there’s just been such an unsolicited demand for these services,” Cloutier said. “We’re taking the best of both organizations.”
Cloutier declined to provide the purchase price.
Lord Green’s 40 employees will join Legence, and its founder, Mychele Lord, will become a senior strategic adviser at Legence, according to Cloutier.
“Combining forces with RE Tech Advisors — a well-respected company and fellow trailblazer in the ESG market — will allow our clients and employees to accelerate their positive impact on our future environment,” Lord said in a statement. “With this transition, we will provide unmatched expertise in all aspects of the built environment to support a wide range of companies in achieving decarbonization goals.”
Legence buying Lord Green follows a series of ESG-related acquisitions for Legence after it bought energy budgeting service Provident Energy Consulting in June and Colorado-based solar energy developer Black Bear Energy in July. And Legence doesn’t plan on slowing down anytime soon, Cloutier said.
“We are very active and look forward to, within the next month or two, announcing some additional acquisitions on the ESG advisory side; the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing engineering contracting side; and the engineering design side,” Cloutier said.
Blackstone has bet big on the ESG sector, picking up a majority stake in Legence in 2020 for an undisclosed price and spending a whopping $1.4 billion to acquire the ESG software, data and consulting company Sphera from Genstar Capital in 2021.
Celia Young can be reached at cyoung@commercialobserver.com.
