British Business Bank-backed ESG platform G17 Eco has been put up for sale after its parent company entered administration, marking another blow to the sustainability reporting sector.
World Wide Generation, the London-based company that operates the G17 Eco platform, has opened bidding to interested parties following a listing on an insolvency marketplace.
The firm was once valued at more than £90m in an equity funding round and counts HSBC, Unilever, and AWS among its customers.
The company is understood to be trading in administration with support from key shareholders while expressions of interest are directed to administrator agents at Gordon Brothers.
World Wide Generation’s financial difficulties arrive at a moment when major corporations are broadly pulling back from earlier sustainability pledges in favour of profitability and shareholder returns.
FTSE 100 fashion retailer Burberry recently delayed its target to become “climate positive” from 2040 to 2050, after reassessing the business case for its previous goal.
Oil majors Shell and BP have both abandoned their Covid-era emissions targets, replacing them with slower transition timelines that reflect shifting commercial priorities.
In 2024, ESG posterchild Unilever scaled back its previous pledges on plastic and diversity, saying new goals were “unashamedly realistic.”
World Wide Generation joins a long list of firms that have become insolvent after receiving loans or equity investment from the taxpayer-funded British Business Bank.
Of the 1,200 startups that received investment through the British Business Bank’s Future Fund, nearly a third have since become insolvent, resulting in losses of £320m according to the organisation’s latest quarterly report.
The company is understood to have received around £15m in funding since its founding in 2016, with participation from Consilium Ventures and the Eagle Venture Fund.
In 2018, the firm was named technology partner to the City of London’s Sustainable Development Capital Initiative, of which founder Manjula Lee, a former Shell employee, was a member.
World Wide Generation developed tools designed to help clients monitor, manage, and improve their sustainability reporting processes across complex supply chains and corporate structures.
According to its latest Companies House filings, the business, which employed around two dozen staff, had accumulated cumulative losses of approximately £13m before entering administration.
Shareholders were asked to inject a further £2m into the business in March last year, suggesting the company had been battling financial pressures for some time before appointing administrators.
Marco Piacquadio and Rachel Ennis of FTS Recovery were appointed joint administrators of World Wide Generation Limited at the beginning of last week.