Archive
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Boards advised to target authenticity in stakeholder capitalism moves
Professionals at Corporate Secretary event tackle shift away from shareholder primacy Companies and their boards need to ensure their messaging is authentic as they shift – or consider moving toward – a stakeholder capitalism model, according to experts. A panel at the Corporate Secretary Forum – Summer in New York earlier this year was asked to consider how to manage the increasingly widespread transition away from shareholder primacy amid growing investor interest in companies that pay attention to other groups. Stakeholder capitalism took on much higher prominence in 2019 when 181 CEOs of major US companies signed the Business Roundtable’s…
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ESG Integration Awards: Gilead Sciences’ work on diversity
Biopharmaceutical company a winner for its DE&I efforts Foster City, California-headquartered Gilead Sciences was awarded the best diversity, equity & inclusion (DE&I) prize at Corporate Secretary and IR Magazine’s ESG Integration Awards in July this year. Here, Korab Zuka, vice president for public affairs at Gilead, talks about the company’s DE&I focus.What are the company’s main achievements in terms of DE&I? Our primary achievements are related to our ongoing efforts supporting diverse partners, making progress on our representation targets and investing further in our commitment to diverse clinical trial design. For example, we created a $10 mn racial equity community…
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ESG Integration Awards: NRG Energy and board oversight
Behind the company’s win Asset managers of all stripes have pushed ESG investments, and investors continue to gobble them up. According to Morningstar, there are now more than 580 ‘sustainable’ open-ended funds and ETFs in the US – well more than five times the number a decade ago – with more than 190 of those launched in 2020-2021. The combined assets of US sustainable funds are now almost $300 bn, three times greater than at the end of 2018. But as with foods labeled ‘organic’, many of those investors have only vague ideas of what it means for a fund…
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Opinion: SEC (finally) jumps into ESG fund fracas
Douglas Chia discusses the need for new SEC rulemaking NRG Energy scooped the prize for best board oversight of ESG at Corporate Secretary and sister publication IR Magazine’s inaugural ESG Integration Awards in July 2022. The awards were presented following the ESG Integration Forum – Summer in New York. Risk oversight is a core responsibility for all boards and addressing ESG-related matters is rapidly becoming a core part of risk oversight. Some investors have raised concerns about what they see as a lack of ESG-related experience or skills on many boards, which they fear limits their ability to oversee those…
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How JLL approaches its ESG strategy
In the first of a new series on the ESG Integration Awards, Corporate Secretary speaks to JLL’s chief sustainability officer Richard Batten The inaugural ESG Integration Awards – celebrating the ESG work of governance and investor relations teams – were presented in July by Corporate Secretaryand sister publicationIR Magazine. In the first of a series of articles on the winners, we speak to Richard Batten, chief sustainability officer of JLL, which won the award for best ESG by a senior management team. Batten’s strategy for ESG leadership has been to reach net-zero emissions at JLL and enable clients to reach…
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The week in GRC: US tech companies banned from building China facilities and Target CEO to stay as company drops retirement age
This week’s governance, compliance and risk-management stories from around the web – Reuters reported that Belgian chemicals company Solvay said it plans to cut industrial waste discharged into the sea from soda-ash production on a Tuscan beach, in the wake of pressure from environmentalists and activist investor Bluebell Capital Partners. Solvay, which had previously refuted concerns the waste may be harmful, now intends to invest around €15 mn ($15 mn) to reduce the release of limestone residue at its facility in Rosignano, Italy, the company said in a statement. The firm said it would also invest in a new soda-ash…
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Apple faces workers’ rights shareholder proposal
Filed resolution urges company to conduct independent assessment A coalition of investors including representatives of New York City and union members has filed a shareholder proposal with Apple regarding the company’s approach to workers’ rights. The filing comes amid widely reported concerns about how some employers are responding to expanding unionization efforts. There has also been a growing focus among companies and investors on human capital management and how US companies treat their employees in general in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. The proponents are New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, on behalf of the New York City retirement…
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Covetrus names general counsel
Margie Pritchard was previously vice president and deputy general counsel at the company Animal-health technology and services company Covetrus has appointed Margie Pritchard as general counsel and corporate secretary. She reports to Ben Wolin, president and CEO. Pritchard was previously vice president and deputy general counsel at Covetrus. In that role she was responsible for corporate and board governance, public reporting, advising investor relations, employment matters including compensation and providing general legal counsel to executive management. Her predecessor was Jamey Seely, who joined Crusoe Energy Systems as general counsel in October 2021. Pritchard had been interim general counsel since December…
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Spire Global hires legal chief
Boyd Johnson was previously general counsel at SPS Commerce Environmental factors have become a statistically meaningful driver of shareholder returns over the past two years, according to ESG investing champion Federated Hermes. Avoiding the ‘ESG laggards’ and those whose standards are slipping is a crucial way to capture the ESG premium, the firm’s global equities team has found. But real estate and energy companies are the exceptions: firms in these sectors with the worst or worsening environmental practices relative to peers tend to outperform. The research follows the declaration by Federated Hermes that ‘responsible investing is not about promoting a…
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Beyond ESG reporting disconnects between issuers and institutional investors
Brian Tomlinson, managing director of ESG at EY, offers recommendations on priorities, context, strategy, internal engagement and more It may not feel like it, but we’re still in the early stages of the evolution of ESG reporting. It took at least half a century to get to a set of generally accepted accounting standards and those, of course, have continued to evolve. We expect the ESG reporting space, moving at capacity-straining speed, to complete its journey faster. Nonetheless, if ESG reporting were a baseball game, we’re probably at the bottom of the third inning. Early-stage big ideas are ripe for…