Blog #trustmeimlisted

Finding the right way to analyse the relationship between a company and its sustainability issues, let alone report it clearly, can get fiendishly complicated. To help us think through these challenges, and how to approach them without losing your sanity or overspending your budget, we were delighted to welcome Harriet Cullum, Global Head of ESG Insights, Diageo; Janice Lingwood, governance and reporting technical expert, and member of the ICAEW Non-Financial Reporting Committee; and Jonathan Labrey, Chief Connectivity and Integrated Reporting Officer at the IFRS Foundation.

In partnership with Finpublica and the New York State Bar Association

With companies scrambling to meet all the new sustainability reporting requirements, the relationship between ‘doing what you say’ and ‘saying what you do’ has never been more complex.  Particularly when you operate across jurisdictional boundaries. So how can reporting companies avoid allegations of greenwashing? And how do you meet obligations in one location without inadvertently slipping up elsewhere?

We were delighted to have a panel of lawyers to help us answer these questions – and particularly delighted to be doing so in partnership with our US friends from Finpublica and the New York State Bar Association. Claire debated the issues and questions from the floor with: Adam Wasserman, Executive Director of Finpublica (and the former Head of Enforcement for the New York Stock Exchange) representing the US; Jindrich Kloub, a partner in the Brussels office of Wilson Sonsini representing the EU; and Becky Clissmann, Sustainability Counsel, Ashurst, representing the UK.

The indications are that AI is not being used extensively in corporate reporting just yet. But for how long? And what will it mean for how reporting is created in the future? With new sustainability reporting standards coming into effect in 2024, there’s a lot for reporters to get their heads round, and the more help we can get the better. Can AI offer that help? AI tools are already proving their worth in collating and finding patterns in historic data, but what about that data – and the narrative around it – being created by AI in the first place? Claire is seeking answers to these questions through a research project in partnership with sustainability data specialists Insig AI, and a team from Imperial College London. In today’s webinar, we were delighted to explore the issues with new panellists Corey Walrod from the ISSB’s technical staff, Diana Rose, ESG Research Director at Insig AI, and Adrian Clark from RBC BlueBay.

At the heart of all the new ESG standards is the impact of sustainability issues on company performance and prospects. In practice, this inevitably leads to finding ways of assessing and calculating their impact in financial terms – not to mention the bigger question of what it all means for a company’s business model. With both EU and ISSB standards coming into effect on 1 January 2024, it was the perfect time for our expert panel to help us think through the challenges. Jeremy Osborn, Global Head of Sustainability at AICPA & CIMA, led with a succinct and clear explanation of the standards; Jeremy Stuber, most recently Global Equity Analyst at Newton Investment Management, gave us the investor view with some pithy examples of how investors think about sustainability information; and Matt Cox, Group Controller at Rio Tinto, who’s a step ahead with integrating sustainability-related issues into the financial statements shared some insights on how they’re approaching it.

Calls for the regulation of AI are intensifying. And it can’t come soon enough in corporate reporting, where the annual reporting cycle has already begun, and companies are starting to use AI in their internal systems, which will inevitably touch the reporting process at some point. While the world waits for regulation to catch up, over the summer reporting expert Claire Bodanis convened research groups of corporates, advisors and investors to explore the issues of using AI in reporting, and how to disclose its use. The result is succinct, pithy guidance for Boards and management, published in November. Joining Claire to discuss the guidance were Fiona Cuttell, Assistant Company Secretary and Head of Non-Financial Reporting at FTSE 100 Haleon; Neil Murphy, CEO of FTSE 250 Bytes Technology Group, which sells AI systems to corporates and the public sector; and Charlotte Lush of ShareAction, representing the investor view.

A step in the right direction, or a step too far? In this webinar, Claire Bodanis and fellow panellists Carol Bell, Co-Founder of Chapter Zero; Storm Taylor, ESG Lead, Vulcan Energy; and Corey Walrod, member of the ISSB Technical Committee, discuss the nitty-gritty of what IFRS Standards 1 and 2 mean for the natural resources industry.  

The term ESG has always been problematic and prone to misuse – reaching a toxic high in US politics some time ago. The original title of the webinar was ‘why the politicisation of ESG could endanger transparency’; but in the months since then, the political debate has moved on to the topic of ESG becoming a proxy in the battle for the role of the corporation in society and how that's playing out in different jurisdictions through politics and regulation. With an election year looming, author Claire Bodanis talked to Democrat Professor Robert Eccles, Founder of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (and regular TMIL panellist), who’s been working with second panellist Republican lawyer Dan Crowley, Partner in the Washington DC office of K&L Gates LLP, on a bipartisan approach to ESG; while Silvia Pavoni, Founder and Editor of the Financial Times Group’s Sustainable Views, gave us the European perspective. Together, our panellists reveal what’s really happening in the corridors of power…

Following her proposal to the Government for regulating the use of AI in reporting, Claire Bodanis joined two women from tech companies on a panel to discuss the pros and cons for the insurance industry of the advent of AI at TWIN’s webinar on Monday 18 September. Under the Chatham House rule, only Claire’s comments have been attributed – but all agreed this was a faithful write-up of this fascinating and challenging debate!

Plans are afoot in the UK for all companies to report on how they will help the Government meet its net zero target, namely through their net zero transition plans. But to report on a plan, you need to have one in the first place… and so far, while many companies have set a net zero target, plans to get there appear to be more thin on the ground. So what’s the Government looking for? What does a realistic plan look like? What are the challenges in creating one? And what can we learn from who’s ahead on this agenda? Moderated by author Claire Bodanis, our cross-sector panel had wise words for the challenges facing us, not just on reporting, but for tackling the climate emergency too. Representing the government agenda was, Alicia Forsyth, Head of Climate Strategy and Co-ordination, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office; representing the Transition Plan Taskforce (TPT) Harriet Howey, Head of ESG Insights at Diageo; representing the finance sector, Kim Croucher, Director of Climate Policy in the Group Sustainability & ESG team, Barclays; and on the legal and regulatory side, Eleanor Reeves, Partner (Environment), Ashurst.

The world of corporate governance is changing fast. As well as revisions to the Corporate Governance Code, companies face a wave of new regulation in ESG reporting, not to mention new requirements for reporting on diversity, the expansion of TCFD reporting and ISSB disclosure, and new resilience statements. Many of the different bodies that companies must answer to are also looking at new requirements. Our expert panellists, Maureen Beresford, Head of Corporate Governance, Financial Reporting Council (FRC), and Janice Lingwood, Governance Expert and Reporting Consultant discussed how to prepare sensibly for the next reporting cycle, while our host, Claire Bodanis, also made an impassioned plea for our regulators to safeguard the truthfulness of reporting by prohibiting the use of AI in its creation, at least until it’s been thoroughly tested.

Nature and biodiversity, central to discussions at COPs 15 and 27 in 2022, are big new themes in corporate reporting. And just as organisations get used to mandatory reporting against the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) – proposals for Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) are being drafted now, with the framework due to be launched in September 2023. TMIL author Claire Bodanis discusses what this means for the corporate reporting world, and the world in general, with: Sarah Dyson, Head of Corporate Responsibility, GSK and member of the TNFD;  Simon Weaver, Partner and Co-head of Climate Risk & Decarbonisation Strategy, KPMG, and member of TCFD and ISSB technical reference group; and Paul Lee, Head of Stewardship and Sustainable Investment Strategy at investment consultancy Redington, and a member of the UK Endorsement Board, for the investor view. A mind-expanding discussion is in store.

The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) has been busy since our first webinar on the subject in January, with two new standards launched and consulted on – namely, general sustainability-related disclosure requirements, and climate-related disclosure requirements. TMIL author Claire Bodanis welcomed back our panel for a stimulating discussion on the developments – Jonathan Labrey of the ISSB; Jeremy Osborn, Global Head of ESG, AICPA CIMA (Association of International Certified Professional Accountants); and Professor Robert Eccles, Founding Chairman of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board.

The debate over the purpose of business has been raging ever since Milton Friedman’s argument, taken up with alacrity by many, that it should be about maximising profit at the expense of all else. Today, in the wake of the pandemic and with pressing challenges facing the world that cannot be solved by any party acting alone, the role of business in society may be on the cusp of change. TMIL author Claire Bodanis hosted a stimulating debate ranging from historical theory through philosophy to hard-nosed financial reality with Charles Wookey, Trustee and Co-founder, A Blueprint for Better Business, Professor Anna Rowlands, St Hilda Professor of Catholic Social Thought and Practice at Durham University, and Steven Fine, CEO, Peel Hunt.

It’s tempting to think that everything we’re doing to change listed companies’ behaviour on environmental, social and governance issues – through investor activism, stricter regulation, better reporting standards and so on – will solve the world’s problems; not least climate change. But will it all come to naught if big money just goes private instead, as the press might have us believe? TMIL author Claire Bodanis presided over a lively debate with Professor Robert Eccles, Founding Chairman of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, Cornelia Gomez, Global Head of ESG at private/growth equity firm General Atlantic, and Paul Lee, Head of Stewardship and Sustainable Investment Strategy at investment consultancy Redington, and a member of the UK Endorsement Board.

The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) was launched by the IFRS Foundation at COP26. ESG reporting experts Professor Robert Eccles, Founding Chairman of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board; Jonathan Labrey, Chief Policy Officer and Head of UK Office, Value Reporting Foundation; and Richard Barker, Professor of Accounting at Oxford’s Saïd Business School talked to TMIL author Claire Bodanis about the ISSB, the ESG disclosure standards it will soon publish, and what it means for companies.