ESG Archive

As ESG considerations continue to swell, institutional investors globally are increasingly building coalitions and engaging with their portfolio companies to improve transparency and enact change on a broad range of ESG and sustainability-related issues. ESG communications specialists (typically working within investor relations, corporate communications or sustainability teams) should act now to stay on top of the rapidly changing developments in this area and more...

A member of the SEC has criticized efforts to boost the number of women on the boards of Californian companies via legislation, arguing that it is an example of a focus by governments on non-shareholders. ‘Stakeholder is certainly in the top 10 list of words that get bandied about Washington… [The term] is so popular precisely because it is so elastic,’ commissioner Hester Peirce says in a recent speech. ‘In the corporate context, however, that elas...

While environmental risks and governance issues like boardroom excess and chairmanship have been on investors’ radars for years, it has taken a while for the trio of ESG factors to be rounded out. The ‘S’ has only recently come to greater prominence, as companies and investors identify social issues as factors to which they should be more alert – with headline issues including diversity, modern slavery and supply chain safety. Leading companies are already t...

In 2008, the world was plunged into a financial crisis because investors made bad decisions on financial risks they didn’t fully understand. Ten years later, a new crisis is brewing. But this time, the risks are sustainability issues such as climate change, water scarcity and human rights abuses. The evidence is clear that sustainability risks affect the corporate bottom line. A recent study by the Universal Ecological Fund found that by 2028, climate change will ...