Centerview Taps Ex-Goldman Partner Mark Tercek as Senior Adviser in ESG Push

(Bloomberg) -- Centerview Partners has hired Mark Tercek to expand the investment bank's advice to companies on environmental, social and governance matters.

Tercek, who was chief executive officer of the environmental non-profit the Nature Conservancy for 11 years through 2019, has most recently been advising companies, investors and non-governmental organizations on their environmental strategies, according to a statement provided to Bloomberg News. 

Before that he spent 24 years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. where he rose to partner, led several investment banking and capital markets groups and developed the bank's environmental strategy. 

At Centerview, where he'll be a senior adviser, Tercek will advise companies across sectors on ESG as investors increasingly screen firms based on their adherence to certain standards.

“We think ESG is in some form going to impact any company from what is going to be good business practice, how will that impact the creation of value and how companies think about where they want to put capital to work,” Centerview Co-Founder Blair Effron said in an interview. 

“We think strategically investors more and more are going to think about ESG in an analytical way and there will be actually be ways to measure why they like company X better,” he said. “We want to help drive that.”

Tercek joins a roster of senior advisers to Centerview including Goldman executive-turned-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and as well as Yossi Cohen, the former director of Israel's Mossad. John Rhea, a dealmaker in the consumer and real estate sectors and a former New York City housing authority chairman, joined as a partner at the firm in 2020.

“We really need to address environmental challenges like climate change, biodiversity and other water challenges very quickly,” Tercek said in an interview. 

“I believe a strong investment banking firm like Centerview is really well positioned to help CEOs figure this out,” he added. 

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