Euronext launches service to help SMEs

As part of Euronext Sustainability Week, the company that includes the Lisbon Stock Market Euronext Lisbon, is to launch various initiatives to help SMEs to navigate and apply new sustainability regulations.

A service will also be launched that allows better comparability of ESG (environmental, social and governance) data and even a network that brings together banks and auditing companies, in order to promote the adoption of new practices in companies.

“Euronext remains focused on supporting companies and the financial ecosystem in general to take this structural path of making investment more sustainable,” said Euronext’s CEO in Portugal, Isabel Ucha, who adds she understands the importance that the topic has in the markets from being “in contact with investors on a daily basis and from the questions they ask.” Therefore, “having objectives and a sustainability trajectory is an essential path for listed companies”, she says.

More focused on SMEs, Euronext will launch the ESG Advisory Solution service, a paid service to support these companies in the implementation of the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), under the CSRD – Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.

The goal is to help with data collection but also policy writing and sustainability reporting. Isabel Ucha says that the greatest difficulty often lies in identifying the indicators that have truly relevant for a specific company and activity.

In an effort to increase the comparability between the ESG performances of listed companies, Euronext will now offer its ESG Peer Benchmarking Report service, which allows listed companies to compare their ESG performance with their peers on more than 50 indicators over four years. It will only be accessible to issuing customers through the Euronext portal.