Dr. Hesse has more than 30 years of experience in sustainable finance and investments and has published numerous studies on the topic. Following a banking apprenticeship at Commerzbank and a degree in Business Administration at the University of Münster, he worked amongst others for HVB Group and completed his PhD on the topic of sustainable banking in 2006. In 2012 he launched SD-M GmbH.

On behalf of the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, SD-M GmbH created standards for financially material sustainability indicators, so-called Sustainable Development Key Performance Indicator Standards (SD-KPI Standards) with high degree of overlap to SASB/ISSB. These SD-KPI Standards are cited as an external sustainability standard in the BaFin Guidance Notes on Dealing with Sustainability Risks. The SD-KPInform Database of SD-M covers 19,000 companies and 16 years and could be used as a historic proxy for SASB/ISSB. The over-/underweighting of equity indices like STOXX Europe 600 SD-KPI and S&P 500 as well as corporate bond indices like iBoxx Corporate EUR SD-KPI leads to risk-adjusted outperformance.