CDP has closed its offices in Indonesia, India and Colombia, letting an estimated 25 people go, Eco-Business has learnt.
To continue reading, subscribe to Eco‑Business.
There's something for everyone. We offer a range of subscription plans.
- Access our stories and receive our Insights Weekly newsletter with the free EB Member plan.
- Unlock unlimited access to our content and archive with EB Circle.
- Publish your content with EB Premium.
The closures follow a restructure instigated in May by the environmental disclosure non-profit’s chief executive Sherry Madera to “move towards a leaner, tech-enabled model emphasising innovation and efficiency.”
CDP was founded in 2000 and is the world’s largest voluntary environmental disclosure platform, with 23,000 companies disclosing their environmental through it globally. In Asia Pacific, the London-headquartered non-profit has a presence in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, and Singapore.
The loss of CDP’s India operation was the result of regulatory changes for environmental, social and governance ratings providers introduced by the Securities and Exchange Board of India, which meant that maintaining a physical office is “currently not feasible,” CDP told Eco-Business in a statement.
CDP will service India from other offices, the non-profit said.
Indonesia will now be serviced from Singapore, which is CDP’s Southeast Asia hub. Colombia will be serviced from Brazil.
Overall, the restructure has resulted in a 20 per cent reduction to its workforce globally, CDP said, without confirming the number of staff it has let go. The restructure “optimises CDP’s global model and strengthens key capabilities to better serve companies, investors and policymakers,” it said.
According to a source familiar with the organisation, CDP’s leadership does not consider emerging markets such as India and Indonesia to harbour significant revenue potential, and both operations are funded predominantly by grants rather than disclosure fees.
CDP told Eco-Business that its commitment to Asia Pacific remains “stronger than ever”. Last year more than 9,200 companies from the region disclosed through its platform – around 40 per cent of the global total; making Asia Pacific the largest region in number of disclosers.
CDP said that to strengthen its Asia focus, it recently appointed former Thomson Reuters Japan and Refinitiv Japan director Hideo Tomita to its board of trustees, and noted that the organisation’s chief revenue officer, José Ordoñez, a member of CDP’s leadership team, continues to be based in Singapore.
Former CDP India director Damandeep Singh said in a LinkedIn post that it was “perplexing” that the restructure has led to a withdrawal from three fastest-growing economies, all of which are experiencing increasing emissions.
CDP’s restructure comes more than a year after the organisation started removing regional positions and replacing them with functional roles – a move that cost a number of senior executives in Asia Pacific their jobs.
Last week, CDP’s market director for Asia Pacific Dennis Wan said that the organisation was seeing record disclosure uptake despite the backlash against environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards instigated by the United States.
He said the record interest in its current disclosure cycle suggested that “mere politics, green-hushing and words are not tapering the recognition that environmental risk is financial risk.”
