The Role, the Craft, and Proving the Value You Created
Julian R. Sterling
These are the companion files of The ESG Manager in Private Equity by Julian R. Sterling.The book on Amazon →
One Excel workbook that closes the gap between the book’s most quantitative chapter and its exit chapter, now corrected. Around it, a blank version for your own company, twelve working documents to print, forty questions that mark themselves, and three cases the book does not work. All free. Nothing is gated behind a sign-up, and no email address is asked for.
Six workbooks, the printable documents and the read-me. Each group below can also be
downloaded on its own. Last revised 23 September 2026.
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Enterprise value is the wrong unit. Chapter 10 lands on 9.7 million
of enterprise value and stops. No investment committee decides in enterprise value. Carried
through an ordinary capital structure the same programme is worth 8.86 of
equity, 0.16× on invested capital and 2.2 points of
gross IRR — and a return of 10.7× on the money spent, measured the way
the committee measures it. That is one multiplication and one subtraction from what the book
already computes, and it is nowhere in the book.
The book prices a line and then drops it. The same case spends 150,000 to
meet two large customers’ requirements and says it “protects 11 million of
revenue”. The chapter’s total excludes it. Two paragraphs later the case reports
that the buyer cited supplier-readiness as its reason for preferring the asset. At the
case’s own 14.7 per cent margin and its own 8.5× multiple, that line protected
6.89 million — 46× its cost, against 14.3×
for the two lines the chapter does count (11.7× only if you divide by the whole 830,000,
which includes the cost of the line the total leaves out). Per euro spent it is the best thing in the book’s
own example, and it is the one item left out.
And here is why the file will not let you say it that way. 6.89 does not beat
the 9.69 created, and the commercial diligence would have priced customer concentration
anyway. So the sheet reports the answer at 0, 50 and 100 per cent attribution — nothing,
3.44, 6.89 — and shows the exact point where defence overtakes creation: when the share
lost times the attribution passes 0.70. One of the checks fails on purpose if the defensive case is
claimed as the larger one. Over-claiming is what gets an ESG manager’s numbers discounted
entirely, which is a warning the book itself makes.
The half-turn nobody controls. The case buys at 8× and sells at
8.5× and never says why. On the exit earnings that step is worth 10.0
million — slightly more than the entire programme beside it. Put the other way,
the whole four-year programme is worth 0.485 of a turn. If the multiple lands
half a turn light, everything the function did is cancelled by the credit market.
And a correction. Chapter 14 says eighteen months is enough to
“remediate contamination, obtain a certification…”. The two clocks are
walked as editable week counts: a management-system certification runs about
8–11 months; contaminated land to a closure statement runs about
19–32, because four quarterly rounds of validation monitoring cannot be
compressed and cannot start until the works finish. Eighteen months is generous for the first
and short for the second — and the second is the one the sentence lists first.
Twenty-nine checks.
Set the attribution share to zero and watch the defensive case go to nothing — that is the
version a sceptical commercial partner will argue for, and it is worth seeing before the meeting
rather than during it. Then change the remediation works from twelve weeks to fifty-two and watch
the exit preparation date move out of year four and into year two.
What the arithmetic does not settle
It cannot tell you how much of the protected revenue belongs to the ESG function rather than to
the commercial workstream — that is the input the whole defensive case turns on, and the
only way to settle it is to ask the losing bidders what moved their number. It cannot tell you
whether ESG moves the exit multiple, which is the largest term of all and the one the book calls
“harder to isolate”. And the process durations are illustrative and vary by
jurisdiction and site; the shape is the point, not the weeks.
The same model, for your own company
The workbook with every input emptied. Enter your own company, programme and capital structure; the checks sheet counts what is still missing and tests what holds for any inputs.
Chapters 10 and 14 · Appendix G
A blank exit-value model
Revenue, EBITDA, entry and exit multiples, what each initiative delivered and cost, the revenue a defensive line protects, leverage, exit EBITDA and net debt, the share lost and the share you can claim, and the durations of your own slowest processes. The file gives the enterprise value and the equity created, the change in multiple and IRR, the defensive line at three attributions with its break-even point, what the multiple step is worth beside the programme, and your exit-preparation clock.
The book’s inputs are listed in a text file inside the archive. Type them back in and the file returns 9.69 of enterprise value, 8.86 of equity, 2.2 points of IRR and a contamination clock of 19 to 32 months.
Twelve pages to print and use. A4, with margins wide enough for US Letter.
Chapters 8 to 15 · Appendices A to C
Twelve working documents
Screening and the risk assessment with its three outputs. The Appendix A diligence checklist, with a column for why an item does not apply. The IC paper section: findings, ranges, one recommendation in deal language, what was not investigated, the exit line. The post-completion action list in its three categories, with the hundred days. The company that cannot and the company that will not, with the escalation ladder. The value creation plan, sized and tracked, carried through to equity. The core metric set as a data dictionary with a destination column. The collection calendar and validation log, with the coverage statement. The abatement cost curve and the choice of target type. The incident protocol and the first seventy-two hours. Exit readiness and the data room. And the first ninety days: the commitments register and the portfolio map.
A workbook that marks itself. Answer in the yellow cells; the marking fills in as you go.
All parts of the book
Forty questions on the book
Six on the field and the rules, seven on the role and getting hired, seven on fundraising, diligence and the hundred days, eight on value creation, data and carbon with Appendix G, six on governance, exit and the first ninety days, and six on the three cases below. Numbers are marked to a tolerance, multiple choice to the letter, and the score sheet counts your errors part by part: that is your revision list.
Nothing is hidden. The marking sheet holds every answer, every tolerance, and the reason for each answer.
New material, not a restatement. Three situations the chapters name and never take to a number. Each case is one workbook: the note is the first sheet, the model is the rest, and a checks sheet closes it. Type your own figures in and every finding recomputes.
Chapter 8 · Case one
Paid twice
Chapter 8’s model answer, priced: “a €1.2m price reduction, plus a specific indemnity capped at €3m” for groundwater, on a site whose range is €0.8 to 2.4 million. The only part the indemnity does not cover is the 0.8 without migration, so the buyer is overpaid by €0.4 million in every outcome, clean plume or worst case, at any probabilities. The cap, larger than the whole site’s high case, invites the reading in which the whole 1.2 is paid twice. The clean version: reprice 0.8, indemnify the groundwater, cap it at the width of the range.
Chapter 12 · Case two
The curve the chapter did not draw
The food manufacturer’s five actions, costed per tonne: compressed air -432 €, lighting -345, heat recovery -24, refrigerant +87, boiler +232. The chapter calls the refrigerant “the single largest abatement”: at 310 tonnes it is a third of the boiler’s 900, which nobody funded. The four funded actions pay for themselves together, €70k a year after their capital, and abate 45% of the identified tonnes.
Chapter 12 · Appendix F · Case three
The target the deal team must fail
The Common Mistake the chapter warns against, run through five years of deployment. Twelve companies, each cutting its own emissions 6 per cent a year; a fund-level target of minus 30 per cent. Financed emissions end up 238%, and intensity per euro invested ends above where it started. Hitting the target would take every company cutting 43% a year. And the first cohort alone shows a fall of 50% of which 32% is its valuations rising, not its emissions falling.
twenty-nine controls — two test the file against the book, and one fails on purpose if the appendix over-claims
Every figure is illustrative. The company and the programme are the book’s own invented
case; the capital structure, the exit earnings and the process durations are added because the
book does not state them, and each is an editable cell.
Opening the file
The workbook opens in Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice Calc, Google Sheets and Numbers. It uses no
macros and no add-ins, so nothing needs to be enabled or trusted. If your spreadsheet asks to
update links on opening, decline — there are none.
What changed, and when
23 Sep 2026
The book’s workbook corrected: the two lines Chapter 10 counts cost 680,000, not 830,000, and returned 14.3×, not 11.7; defence overtakes creation once share lost × attribution passes 0.70, not only at total loss and full attribution; the buyer’s remark is credited to Chapter 10. Twenty-nine checks. Added: a blank version, twelve working documents, forty questions that mark themselves and three new cases. The workbook can now also be downloaded on its own.
Closing the DealTwo defensible bridges 20.70 million apart, a peg worth 7.00 million, and the six choices that remove 6.60 of a 12.00 earn-out.
CMBS and CRE CLOsWhere the loss actually lands, from appraisal reduction to realised severity, and what the B-piece is really being paid for.
How to Read a Commercial LeaseThe three refinements chapter 19 names and never performs, and the renewal rate below which the mark-to-market is worth nothing.
How to Read a Credit AgreementWhere the default actually comes from, the cure that costs 5.5 times the other, and the capacity nobody adds up.
How to Read a Real Estate Loan AgreementThe cure ratio in closed form, the four-point window in which the cheap cure works, and the cure sized to the wrong threshold.
Office Real EstateA six per cent yield that returns 3.2 per cent once the re-letting cycle is paid for, and the headline-to-net-effective rent arithmetic.
Private Equity Real EstateBoth worked waterfalls to the dollar, the two capital stacks, and the arithmetic of the promote made changeable.
Private Markets PerformanceThirty-one of the thirty-three figures chapter 19 publishes reproduce exactly — and the two that do not are named rather than quietly adopted.
Raising a Real Estate FundThe chapter 17 funnel run on a calendar — when the first close actually lands, and why more travel does not help.
Real Estate FinanceFour people look at one building and reach four numbers; the lender is whole only above 105,109,489, twelve per cent below today’s value rather than forty.
Real Estate Financial ModelingProperty, development and fund models built line by line, and the modelling test worked end to end.
Real Estate Fund ManagementThe waterfall of 6.11, the build-to-core of 8.7 and the proceeds gap, reproduced as live formulas rather than asserted.
REIT Analysis and ValuationFFO of 532.0, AFFO of 381.0, net asset value and dividend safety — every figure a formula you can change.
Retail Real EstateThe occupancy cost of every unit in a centre, the sixteen per cent of the rent roll no tenant can sustain, and the right-size-convert-or-hold decision priced.
Sale and LeasebackA €179.5 million transaction end to end, with rent cover measured on the entity that actually signs the lease.
Self-Storage Real EstateThe cohort engine behind a 590-unit store, and the rate increase on existing customers priced against the move-outs it causes.
The Fund Finance ProfessionalChapter 8 builds the reported-to-eligible NAV bridge; chapter 9 computes every ratio without it. Two points at every state — and what a subscription line does to the IRR.
The Growth Equity InvestorWhat a pro rata cheque really costs, and the band where defending your ownership loses money.
The Private Credit InvestorThe two coverage ratios are not measured on the same thing: the erosion is 47.7 per cent, not the 28.7 the headline implies.
The Private Equity Fund Controller PlaybookThe book defines IRR, DPI, RVPI and TVPI, tells you to update them at the exit, and prints not one value. Computed: a 1.833× deal inside a fund at 0.892 TVPI.
The Venture Capital AssociateWhat defending a position costs, and how many companies a reserve pool actually defends.
Financial Risk ManagementA fund inside every limit that cannot meet a redemption — and the number that decides it is the one with no currency attached.
Business ValuationThree advisers land 26.8 per cent apart on one company, and the whole gap turns out to be 1.96 points of perpetual growth.
Quantitative FinanceThree models agree to a quarter of one per cent about a number that one unobservable input moves a hundred and three times as much.
Asset ManagementFour people quote four returns for one mandate, all correct and 2.7017 points apart — forty-eight times the manager’s net skill.
Alternative InvestmentsA manager reports 13.29 per cent and the endowment earns 6.26 — both correct, and only a third of the advertised advantage arrives.
Credit AnalysisFour defensible EBITDAs on one borrower give leverage from 3.19x to 6.47x — and the add-back argument is fifty times the covenant headroom.
Venture CapitalOne company out of twenty-eight returns 56.7 per cent of the fund, and half the capital goes in after the decision — at half the return.
Machine Learning for FinanceFive people quote the accuracy of one credit model, all five are right, and the number that decides how much money it makes is none of them.
Commercial Real Estate InvestingThe equity earned 8.6647 per cent and the investor received exactly 8.0000 — the preferred return, and nothing above it.
Mergers and AcquisitionsThe board paper says the deal creates 13,436,667 of value. The arithmetic says it destroys 17,530,855. Nobody is lying.
DerivativesThe treasury report says the hedge cost 1,233,698. That is the interest differential, not a cost.
Treasury ManagementFive cash balances for one company, all correct and 145,600,000 apart — and the revolver that is two-thirds of the liquidity leaves at a revenue fall of 8.4127 per cent.
Financial Planning and AnalysisRevenue 3.0190 per cent above budget and operating profit 16.3209 per cent below it, in the same quarter, with every figure correctly stated.
Energy TradingA position report that is 91.7031 per cent hedged and correctly computed, on a book that is short 2,542,000 MWh — and a margin call of 198,400,000 the next morning.
Construction Cost ControlA contract sum of 26,301,102 became a final account of 29,153,363 on the building that was drawn — and 85.8 per cent of what was lost was knowable on the day it was signed.
Trade FinanceSix routes to payment on one 4,200,000 export order cost between 178,040 and 223,268, a spread worth 14.8 per cent of the margin, and a day of buyer credit costs 1,031.76.
Cost AccountingOne factory costed twice on the same 13,440,000 of overhead, and 4,053,091 moves between four product families.
Pricing StrategyA list price of 148.00, a pocket price of 112.51, and the nine deductions in between — with what one point of price is actually worth.
Contract ManagementA bid 5.50 a unit cheaper, signed on paper worth 9.81 a unit more — and 94.68 per cent of it was knowable on the day of signature.
Capital MarketsFour defensible readings of one bond, the cost of an issue under each convention, and the placement discount computed at a constant discount.
Financial RegulationThree ratios pass and the fourth is in breach by 1,956.0 million: the output floor, the liquidity buffer after encumbrance, and the loan split.
Bank ManagementFour defensible readings of one balance sheet, the deposit beta measured two ways, and the liquidity that lasts 3.9 days.
The Real Estate WorkoutFour ways out of one broken loan, discounted to today, and the 58.7 cents at which a payoff beats enforcement.
Go beyond the companion files
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