TheCorporateCounsel.net

According to this recent study from IRRC & the Sustainability Investment Institute (Si2), sustainability reporting has come a long way, but only a few companies have taken the next step and started to issue “integrated reports.” Integrated reporting is intended to provide “a holistic look at material information that goes beyond corporate financial disclosures and gives investors insight on a company’s risk and value creation potential.”

Here are some of the study’s highlights (also see this Davis Polk blog):

– 78% of S&P 500 companies issue a sustainability report.

– 40% of S&P 500 companies include voluntary sustainability discussions in annual financial reports or other regulatory filings. This is a key signal that an increasing number of companies believe sustainability issues are financially material. The reporting, however, varies widely.

– Among companies that issue sustainability reports, 95% offer quantified, annually comparable environmental performance metrics; two-thirds set quantified and time-bound environmental goals. Some 86% offer social performance metrics, but only 40% set quantified social goals.

– Only 14 S&P 500 companies issue what Si2 considers to be fully integrated reports, though this is a 100 percent increase from five years ago.

So which companies are providing integrated reports? According to the study, they include GE, Intel, Pfizer, Allstate, Medtronic, Eli Lilly, Southwest Airlnes, AEP, Ingersoll Rand, Praxair, Entergy, Clorox, NiSource & Dentsply Sirona. While the concept has been slow to catch on, it has been endorsed by the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI),whose signatories have $82 trillion in assets under management.

ESG: Unifying Non-Financial Reporting Standards

One of the reasons that companies may be slow to adopt integrated reporting is that there are a whole bunch of competing reporting standards. So it’s welcome news that a group of the standard-setters – including the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), the Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB), FASB (as an observer) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) – has announced a project to unify their sustainability & integrated reporting frameworks. The FAQs elaborate:

Participants will work together to refine overlapping metrics with the same intent. Where their objectives do not require differences, we will look to achieve and maintain the highest possible alignment. Such alignment is subject to the due process considerations of each organization’s governance procedures.

The initial output, expected in Q3 2019, will be a publication available on www.corporatereportingdalogue.com – the document will show the linkages of the TCFD Recommendations with the respective reporting frameworks and the linkages between the frameworks. This work will include identifying how non-financial metrics relate to financial outcomes, explain how the TCFD recommendations should be integrated in mainstream reports and outline preparations for a next phase during which the framework providers will align their metrics where possible across all their reporting frameworks.

The new project is being led by the IIRC’s Corporate Reporting Dialogue. Note that the IIRC, which is leading this effort, is different than the IRRC, which co-issued the sustainability report discussed in today’s first blog. I want to be clear about that, first because the IRRC is dissolving at the end of this year (into the Weinberg Center), but also in case the two organizations have some sort of a “People’s Front of Judea” / “Judean People’s Front” thing going on.

ESG: Coming Soon to a Debt Deal Near You?

According to this “Institutional Investor” article, European institutions have a strong appetite for ESG debt investments – and that appetite may drive more product to market over the next several years.  Here’s an excerpt:

Environmental, social, and governance investing is taking root in the debt markets, where demand for ESG offerings is outstripping supply, according to consulting firm Cerulli Associates. The inclusion of ESG factors in fixed income is becoming more widespread, but opportunities for socially responsible investing remain scarce, Cerulli said in a statement Monday on its European research. The firm expects strong demand from institutional investors in Europe will drive the creation of ESG offerings in fixed income over the next five years.

– John Jenkins