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Key Takeaways: PFAS and Financial Risk

• Per and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a growing financial liability, not just an environmental issue, affecting asset values, loan security, insurance coverage, and Merger & Acquisition (M&A) transactions.
• Regulatory risk is accelerating globally, with expanding state-level enforcement and specific PFAS-containing product bans in the U.S., Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) liability exposure, and international prohibitions such as Australia’s Industrial Chemicals Environmental Management Standard (IChEMS) framework.
• Failure to screen for PFAS during underwriting or due diligence can result in Potentially Responsible Party (PRP) liability, litigation, borrower default, and multimillion-dollar remediation costs.
• Financial institutions should integrate PFAS screening into Phase I/II ESAs, portfolio risk assessments, supply chain reviews, and M&A negotiations.
• Proactive PFAS risk management reduces financial exposure, improves underwriting clarity, and protects long-term portfolio stability.

PFAS are not just an environmental problem. They are a rapidly escalating financial risk for lenders, insurers, and investors. This remains true despite the recent delays and rollbacks of some PFAS regulations under the current presidential administration.

From loan portfolios and M&A due diligence to insurance claims and investment decisions, PFAS contamination is reshaping the financial landscape. The risks associated with these “forever chemicals” are as real and persistent as the compounds themselves.

Proactively identifying, assessing, and managing PFAS-related financial exposures is critical for financial institutions to mitigate risk, protect assets, and ensure long-term stability.

Where PFAS Poses Financial Risks

The widespread use of PFAS in manufacturing, combined with the ability of these chemicals to filter into the environment, means that the financial risks associated with them are extremely far-reaching. These are just some of the segments that can feel surprisingly strong effects of PFAS implications:

• Real Estate and Property Values: Properties affected by PFAS contamination can lose significant value, become unsellable, or require extensive remediation.
• Loan Portfolios: Financial institutions face increased risk of loan defaults tied to contaminated properties or businesses burdened by cleanup costs, regulatory penalties, or litigation.
• M&A Due Diligence: Unquantified PFAS liabilities can derail transactions or lead to unexpected post-acquisition losses.
• Insurance Claims: As PFAS-related environmental claims continue to grow insurers are increasingly excluding PFAS from pollution coverage.
• Investment Decisions: Transparency around PFAS management has become a differentiator for companies seeking capital.
• Litigation and Reputational Risk: As regulatory enforcement increases, financial institutions and insured clients face litigation exposure, with the distinction between intentional and unintentional PFAS use emerging as a key factor.

Understanding PFAS Risks in Financial Contexts

To evaluate PFAS exposure effectively, financial institutions must understand two core drivers of risk: where contamination originates, and how regulatory frameworks assign liability. These factors directly influence asset valuation, underwriting decisions, and long-term portfolio stability.

Key Sources of Contamination

PFAS contamination often stems from industrial, municipal, and consumer product sources. This includes manufacturing and firefighting foam to wastewater discharge and everyday consumer goods. These chemicals are now found in most U.S. municipal water supplies, making PFAS nearly impossible to avoid in property and portfolio risk assessments.

Evolving PFAS Regulations

While certain federal PFAS rules in the United States have recently been delayed or narrowed, regulatory momentum has not slowed overall. Instead, it has shifted, with states and international jurisdictions accelerating their own enforcement frameworks.

States including California, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and New Jersey continue advancing aggressive PFAS investigation, reporting, and cleanup requirements. Roughly half of U.S. states now have PFAS-related laws in place, particularly targeting consumer products such as food packaging, textiles, personal care items, and children’s products.

Globally, the regulatory landscape is tightening further. In Australia, the IChEMS) framework took effect nationwide on July 1, 2025, prohibiting the import, manufacture, export, and use of certain PFAS — including perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluoroocatne sulfonic acid (PFOS), and perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS) — unless exempted. All states and territories have adopted the framework, and non-compliance may be treated as a pollution incident, exposing companies to enforcement and penalties.

At the international level, the Stockholm Convention continues expanding restrictions on long-chain PFAS production and trade, reinforcing a broader global phase-down of high-risk compounds.

For multinational lenders and investors, these global regulatory shifts introduce jurisdiction-specific liability exposure that can materially affect asset valuation, underwriting decisions, and long-term portfolio stability.

Because PFAS regulations are evolving rapidly and unevenly across jurisdictions, keeping up to date on all of them can feel like a full-time job. The Antea Group Global PFAS Regulatory Dashboard provides clear, real-time visibility into PFAS regulatory activity worldwide, helping companies stay ahead of compliance changes and avoid unexpected liabilities. If your organization is unsure where it stands or how new requirements may apply, reach out to our team for guidance.

Strategies for Assessing and Managing PFAS Financial Exposure

Once PFAS risk drivers are understood, financial institutions must translate that insight into structured mitigation strategies. The following approaches help lenders, insurers, and investors quantify exposure across assets, transactions, and value chains — and reduce the likelihood of unexpected financial loss.

1. Enhanced Environmental Due Diligence

Integrate PFAS screening into Phase I and II Environmental Site Assessments (ESAs) to identify potential contamination early.

2. Portfolio Screening and Risk Ranking

Perform PFAS portfolio risk assessments to identify high-risk assets or companies based on historical site use, industry sector, and proximity to known PFAS sources.

3. Supply Chain PFAS Screening and Transparency

Screen supply chains for intentional and unintentional PFAS use to anticipate regulatory, product liability, and valuation risks.

4. Underwriting and Policy Development

Insurers should revisit policy language, exclusions, and underwriting practices to better address PFAS-related risks.

5. Contractual Protections in M&A

Include PFAS-specific indemnities, representations, and warranties to allocate liability appropriately between buyers and sellers during M&A transactions.

6. Probabilistic Cost Modeling

Use PFAS cost modeling and scenario-based analysis to estimate potential remediation, compliance, and litigation expenses.

7. Strategic Communication

Engage transparently with stakeholders, such as investors, borrowers, and regulators, about PFAS risks and mitigation strategies to build trust and confidence.

Case Example: Structured Due Diligence Preserves Deal Value

A private equity firm acquiring a power generation facility in Wisconsin incorporated targeted PFAS screening into its environmental review. Consultants identified historical use of aqueous film-forming foam (AFFF) and evidence of prior discharge into surrounding soils.

Armed with this information, the buyer negotiated a reduced purchase price and required the seller to retain responsibility for ongoing remediation, including soil excavation and groundwater monitoring.

By integrating enhanced due diligence, contractual protections, and forward-looking cost modeling, the buyer preserved transaction value and avoided inheriting significant long-term liabilities.

PFAS Remediation Challenges and Cost Implications

PFAS remediation is technically demanding and expensive, with no universal solution. Current remediation approaches often involve removing PFAS from contaminated water or soil and then using specialized treatment methods to destroy or permanently manage the chemicals. While newer destruction technologies show promise, they remain costly, complex, and not yet widely available. This contributes to uncertainty in cleanup timelines and total project costs.

For financial stakeholders, that uncertainty translates directly into cost variability and long-term liability. Cleanup expenses can easily reach into the millions, depending on site conditions, regulatory requirements, and evolving treatment standards. This cost variability can materially affect property valuations, loan security, insurance coverage, and investment performance, making early risk identification and realistic cost modeling essential.

By contrast, a national lender that financed redevelopment of a former industrial property without PFAS screening during underwriting later faced significant consequences when contamination was discovered years after closing. Historical use of firefighting foam and surface coatings had resulted in elevated PFAS levels, and under updated CERCLA regulations, the lender was designated as a PRP. Litigation, regulatory scrutiny, and cleanup obligations followed.

As remediation costs escalated into the millions, the property’s value declined sharply, and the borrower ultimately defaulted — leaving the lender with a contaminated asset and long-term financial exposure that could have been mitigated through earlier screening and risk allocation.

Benefits of Proactive PFAS Risk Management

When addressed early and strategically, PFAS risk management delivers measurable financial and operational advantages for lenders, insurers, and investors. Key benefits include:

• Reduced PFAS Financial Exposure: Early identification and mitigation minimize liability and cost.
• Informed Lending and Investment Decisions: Better insight into PFAS risk profiles improves financial resilience.
• Streamlined M&A Transactions: Reduced uncertainty supports smoother deal structuring, pricing, and negotiations.
• Improved Insurance Underwriting and Claims Management: Greater risk clarity strengthens understanding of PFAS-related exposures.
• Enhanced Reputation and Regulatory Standing: Demonstrated environmental stewardship supports compliance confidence and stakeholder trust.

Case Example: Proactive Due Diligence Protects Asset Value

A mid-sized regional bank evaluating a loan for the acquisition of a former manufacturing site identified potential PFAS exposure linked to historical fire suppression systems. Rather than proceeding with a standard Phase I ESA alone, the bank commissioned targeted soil and groundwater sampling.

Elevated PFAS levels were confirmed, prompting the bank to require site remediation and environmental insurance coverage prior to closing.

This proactive approach reduced liability exposure, protected collateral value, and ensured regulatory compliance. This demonstrated how structured PFAS risk management directly supports financial resilience.

PFAS Doesn’t Have To Be “Forever”

PFAS represents a multifaceted and growing financial risk that can affect property values, portfolios, insurance coverage, and corporate transactions. Identifying and managing your financial risks associated with PFAS may seem like an impossible task, but it’s important to remember that PFAS liabilities are not forever. With the right expert advice and early identification, the risks can be effectively managed and mitigated.

How Antea Group USA Supports the Financial Sector with PFAS

Antea Group provides specialized PFAS consulting services to help financial institutions understand and manage emerging environmental liabilities. Our offerings include:

• PFAS due diligence for lending, M&A, and investment activities.
• PFAS portfolio risk assessments and cost modeling.
• Litigation and regulatory support for PFAS exposure.
• Integration with EHS due diligence to streamline environmental reviews.

With expertise in both the regulatory and financial dimensions of PFAS, Antea Group helps clients stay ahead of evolving PFAS compliance requirements while protecting business value and reputation. Do you have questions? Reach out to our experts today!

The Curiosity Cube™, a mobile science lab from MilliporeSigma, the U.S. and Canada Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, has begun its 2026 tour of North America, Europe, and Southern Africa. Throughout the year, over 2,000 employees and partners worldwide will step out of their laboratories, manufacturing facilities, and offices to share their skills and insights with the next generation of scientists, providing hands-on STEM experiences for an expected 62,000 students.

“Our employees work every day to impact life and health with science, and that passion makes them powerful role models for today’s students,” said Jeffrey Whitford, Vice President, Sustainability and Social Business Innovation, the Life Science business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. “As we mark the 10^th anniversary of our SPARK™ employee volunteer program, the Curiosity Cube™ remains one of the many ways we spark curiosity and inspire confidence in students. We provide access to hands-on science by bringing the interactive, mobile lab directly to their schools.”

Inside this year’s Curiosity Cube™ are three lessons focused on synthetic biology. This topic introduces students to biology principles and highlights growing sectors within the life sciences, including research and development, healthcare, and agriculture. The three lessons include:

• Enzyme Function: Demonstrating how enzyme shapes influence biological processes using lock and key models.
• DNA Coding: Allowing students to discover how DNA “codes” affect traits and behaviors.
• Gene Activation: Highlighting how turning genes on or off can create genes that help solve real-world problems.

The eighth North American tour includes 133 events across major cities in the U.S. and Canada, including Austin, Boston, Cleveland, Durham, Houston, Kansas City, Milwaukee, San Diego, San Jose, St. Louis, Toronto, and more. For its fifth European tour, the Curiosity Cube™ will host 156 events with stops in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the U.K., with new stops in Poland, Serbia, and Slovakia. After a successful expansion to Southern Africa in 2025, the Curiosity Cube™ is returning to host 126 events alongside universities in Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and will expand to Zambia for the first time.

To learn more about the Curiosity Cube™ mobile science lab and view the 2026 tour schedule, visit TheCuriosityCube.com and follow the Curiosity Cube™ on Instagram: @curiositycube_milliporesigma.

Climate change is increasingly shaping business decisions at the executive level. From workers’ safety to supply chain disruptions, effects of rising temperatures and extreme weather patterns have proven to be a financial risk.

In 2024 alone, 84% of S&P 500 companies aligned with the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure, marking a 62% increase since 2021. It’s no wonder that climate risk assessments have become essential for protecting the longevity and value of a company, as well as maintaining customer and stakeholder trust.

What Is a Climate Risk Assessment?

Climate risk assessment is a process of analyzing a company’s operations, assets, and value chain to identify the most significant climate risks it could face, both now and in the future. The evaluation looks at a company through the lens of climate change, parsing how staff, operations, resources, product delivery, and finances could be affected by these external events. Overall, you want to walk away from a climate risk assessment with a clear view of what climate-related risks your business is exposed to.

Different Types of Climate Risks

Typically, climate risk assessment evaluates a business’ risks in two categories: physical and transition risks.

Physical risks are the ways in which climate change could disrupt a company’s physical assets, facilities, employees, and operations in short-term (acute) or ongoing (chronic) changes to weather. For example, excessive heat conditions could harm workers, or repeated flooding could lead to the decommissioning of a facility.

Transition risks encompass policy and law, technology, reputation, market, and more. These risks arise from the shift toward a lower‑carbon economy as policies, technologies, and market expectations evolve to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. While setting targets such as carbon neutrality or net zero can be relatively straightforward, achieving them often requires significant investment in new technologies, operational changes, and value‑chain adjustments, which can introduce unexpected costs and competitive pressures. Transition risks may also include legal and regulatory exposure if companies fail to comply with emerging climate‑related requirements, or if public disclosures about climate commitments and performance are misleading or incomplete.

How Are Climate Risk Assessments Conducted?

Climate risk assessments are complex processes that require data gathering, predictive modeling, prioritization, and ultimately, action to address what’s been uncovered in the assessment. Support from expert practitioners and consultants ensures that each step is carried out thoroughly and effectively.

Climate risk assessment begins with identifying a company’s physical and transition risks, as well as its vulnerabilities to these risks under different futures scenarios. Physical and transition risks like those outlined above can be identified through geophysical analysis, desktop research, and/or stakeholder engagement.

Vulnerability mapping, the other key component of this part of the process, assesses potential climate-related hazards and draws connections to how and where risk exposures are most likely to affect the company and its stakeholders if they are realized. This forecasts how employees, protocols, resources, communities, and investments will be directly affected by climate-related risks. Impact will vary between different arms of your business.

Vulnerability and risk exposure mapping will uncover countless risks. But because it’s not possible to tackle all of them at once, companies must prioritize identified risks. You’ll want to assess which matters the most based on urgency, possible financial losses, safety concerns, and reputational damage. Take each risk and identify those that are both highly probable (exposure) and will have the most significant impact on your company (vulnerability). Those are the ones to address first.

From there, you can develop an action plan to correct these internal issues. You can also revisit prioritizing impacts over time. Just as regulations change, so will what is most important to your business. Ongoing climate risk assessment will ensure that your company is always on the cutting edge of sustainability. It is recommended that the full climate risk assessment process be completed every 2-3 years or as the company faces large changes in geography or structure, such that may arise with mergers & acquisitions, closures, and market prioritization shifts.

Benefits of Climate Risk Assessments

Climate risk assessments are a that delivers returns to both your company and the community it serves. Here are four of the most significant ways an assessment can empower your business:

1. Strengthening resilience. As the saying goes: an ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure. Climate risk assessments prepare companies to be adaptable to the ongoing effects of climate change. It reduces moments of surprise, ensures action plans for risk-related events, and gives businesses more fortitude to bounce back from disruptions.
2. Identifying opportunities. The holistic nature of a climate risk assessment means that it identifies both risks and opportunities in one exercise. The kind of deep analysis required to complete an assessment provides a fresh point of view for discovering new potential and rethinking existing work, making a compelling business case for the undertaking, beyond just addressing potential threats.
3. Informing investments. With a clear view of climate risks, companies can budget for long-term climate-friendly planning. This could mean upgrading technologies, reinforcing facilities, protecting assets, and more. Either way, a business can invest to minimize future risk with confidence.
4. Supporting Enterprise Risk Management (ERM). ERM is all about anticipating future mishaps. Conducting a climate risk assessment will only strengthen a company’s ERM strategy. All findings should be integrated into ERM so that climate-related risks are given the same attention as others.

Guidance on How To Get Started

While you may be on board with performing a climate risk assessment, it may take some work to get proper funding and support from executives. The first step to getting there is to engage key stakeholders within your company. Identify departments that could be affected by assessment findings, and start documenting relevant information. Enterprise-wide collaboration will be essential to the process. Teaming up with legal, finance, operations, and more will bolster your case. Additionally, when department leadership invests in climate risk assessment, it’s easier to get executives to follow. A cross-functional workshop, led by your external partner in conducting the CRA, is another opportunity to engage executives and other leaders in understanding the business value of an assessment.

However, don’t just rely on internal resources. While your company’s leaders are experts in their field, they may not be experts in climate risk assessment. Connecting with external partners who have experience in risk assessment will take the guesswork out of the process. Having an objective external expert to guide you not only through the assessment, but also through internal conversations with leaders, makes the process more efficient and effective.

Building a better future

Climate risk assessment isn’t just a tool to help you navigate the now. It’s an investment in resilience that will only enhance the long-term value of your company. If you are ready to take the next step in your commitment to sustainability and the environment, get in touch today. We offer a variety of climate-related risk assessment services to help your business stay strong and agile, no matter what extreme weather comes your way.

Originally published by Arizona State University News

By Sandy Keaton Leander

In a groundbreaking initiative aimed at empowering college athletes beyond their playing careers, Arizona State University and GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) teamed up to launch the first-of-its-kind Student-Athlete Venture Studio.

The program helps student-athletes navigate the rapidly changing landscape of name, image and likeness licensing by providing them with the tools, mentorship and resources to develop, launch and grow business ventures.

Initiated and designed by the J. Orin Edson Entrepreneurship + Innovation Institute at ASU, GoDaddy and Sun Devil Athletics, this collaboration combines ASU’s entrepreneurial resources with GoDaddy’s digital expertise to help student-athletes build their brands.

“The Student-Athlete Venture Studio enables collegiate athletes to become entrepreneurs and provides a proactive approach to navigating NIL successfully,” said Jeff Kunowski, associate director of innovation programs at Edson E+I Institute. “By fostering interdisciplinary collaboration across ASU and leveraging sport as a platform, we are helping athletes develop ventures and lifelong skills to help them excel beyond their careers as college athletes.”

Following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2021, student-athletes have been navigating what is a relatively new entrepreneurial landscape. College athletes can now benefit financially from their name, image and likeness with no penalty from the NCAA, but figuring out how to do so can be complicated and time-consuming.

As part of this program, student-athletes will benefit from in-person and online educational content, opportunities to compete for grant funding, and a collaborative working space at Mountain America Stadium, a significant location due to its proximity to Sun Devil Athletics administration, facilities and the athletes themselves. This convenient location allows athletes to easily schedule and drop in for hands-on mentoring sessions. Dedicated workstations and conference rooms provide a professional environment where they can actively develop their ventures.

GoDaddy helped found the initiative through its global social impact program, Empower by GoDaddy, and will provide more than 650 student-athletes with free access to digital branding tools, including GoDaddy Airo, the company’s AI-powered solution for developing an online presence in minutes. These resources, consisting of more than $1 million in combined cash and in-kind support to be distributed to students in 2025, allow athletes to establish a professional online presence, launch ventures quickly and easily scale their ideas.

“We’re thrilled to combine the business-building power of GoDaddy Airo with the drive and immense potential of these enterprising student-athletes, ” said Jared Sine, chief strategy and legal officer at GoDaddy. “According to our research, 50% of Gen Z aspire to become entrepreneurs, and through Empower by GoDaddy, we’re accelerating this journey for these young innovators by providing them with the tools they need to bring their business dreams to life off the field.”

The program’s inspiration came from a collaboration between Kunowski and Kate Fitzgerald, a former ASU women’s beach volleyball player and founder of VBAmerica, a volleyball lifestyle clothing brand.

“NIL regulations and ASU’s innovative resources allowed me to launch VBAmerica and build opportunities for life after sport,” Fitzgerald said. “As student athletic council president, I saw a need to help other athletes access these same resources: launching businesses, securing grants and building networks. The Student-Athlete Venture Studio embodies this mission, empowering athletes to thrive through NIL and entrepreneurship.”

Athletes in the program will pitch their venture ideas for seed funding during a Demo Day each academic year.

About The J. Orin Edson Entrepreneurship + Innovation Institute at ASU
The J. Orin Edson Entrepreneurship + Innovation Institute at ASU is a high-impact, driver and supporter of the entrepreneurial ecosystem at ASU, in greater Phoenix, and nationally. We are a network of people, support systems, collaborative resources and tools for students, leaders, entrepreneurs and innovators in the community. We are nimble by design, scale rapidly, and are continually building our abilities to be the conduit that provides support to you where and when you need it.

About GoDaddy
GoDaddy helps millions of entrepreneurs globally start, grow, and scale their businesses. People come to GoDaddy to name their idea, build a website and logo, sell their products and services and accept payments. GoDaddy Airo®, the company’s AI-powered experience, makes growing a small business faster and easier by helping them to get their idea online in minutes, drive traffic and boost sales. GoDaddy’s expert guides are available 24/7 to provide assistance. To learn more about the company, visit www.GoDaddy.com.