At the end of last week, ISS announced its benchmark policy updates for 2023. The policy changes will apply to shareholder meetings held on or after February 1, 2023, except for those with one-year transition periods. The...more
In light of the billions that even the SEC’s economic analysis estimates would be spent complying with its proposed climate disclosure regulations (see this PubCo post, this PubCo post and this PubCo post), will those...more
Here’s a big scoop from Bloomberg: the “SEC is months away from finalizing expansive new climate disclosure requirements as the agency juggles investor demands for more transparency, tech glitches and a tough Republican legal...more
Last week, SEC Chair Gary Gensler gave testimony before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. While his prepared testimony largely revisited familiar themes, the Committee’s questioning offered a bit more...more
“California Approves a Wave of Aggressive New Climate Measures” was a headline in the NYT on Thursday, and that included a “record $54 billion in climate spending, a measure to prevent the state’s last nuclear power plant...more
In this July report, Responses to the SEC’s Climate Proposal, KPMG discusses various themes and observations that it gleaned from its review of comment letters on the SEC’s 510-page comprehensive and stunningly detailed...more
Over the past several years of political discord, many CEOs have felt the need to voice their views on important political, environmental and social issues. For example, after the murder of George Floyd and resulting national...more
West Virginia v EPA, the next-to-final decision handed down by SCOTUS this term, is a significant decision regarding a rule that the EPA said was never even in effect, that it had no intention of enforcing and that it planned...more
At a recent meeting of the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee discussing the SEC’s climate disclosure proposal, a speaker in charge of ESG investing at an asset manager raised the possible risk that companies, faced with a...more
On Wednesday, in an Expert Forum sponsored by Cornerstone Research, Stanford professor and former SEC Commissioner Joe Grundfest and Vice Chair and Chief Legal Officer of Millennium Management and former SEC General Counsel...more
On March 21, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced a long-awaited proposal that would require public companies to disclose extensive climate-related information in their registration statements and periodic...more
Earlier this week, SEC Chair Gary Gensler gave the keynote address for an investor briefing on the SEC Climate Disclosure Rule presented by nonprofit Ceres. In his remarks, entitled “Building Upon a Long Tradition,” Gensler...more
[This post is Part II of a revision and update of my earlier post that primarily reflects the contents of the proposing release. Part I (here) covered the background of the proposal and described the SEC’s proposed climate...more
[This post is Part I of a revision and update of my earlier post primarily reflecting the contents of the proposing release. This post covers background and describes various aspects of the proposal other than the sections on...more
In September last year, Corp Fin posted a sample letter to companies containing illustrative comments regarding climate change disclosures, presumably designed to help companies think about and craft their climate-related...more
Although there is an SEC open meeting scheduled for this week, the commissioners won’t be taking up any proposals from Corp Fin at that meeting (see the agenda). That’s a little puzzling given that the SEC’s agenda for Corp...more
This week, ISS issued its benchmark policy updates for 2022. The policy changes will apply to shareholder meetings held on or after February 1, 2022. The key changes for U.S. companies relate to say-on-climate proposals,...more
According to audit firm Deloitte, “[i]nformative climate reporting requires a complex transformation of reporting processes, of data collection, education of the finance function, and in many cases, of the audit committee...more
A group of 587 institutional investors managing over $46 trillion in assets have signed a new statement calling on governments to undertake five priority actions to accelerate climate investment before COP26, the 26th United...more
On Tuesday, SEC Chair Gary Gensler testified for over four hours (without a break!) before the thousands (it seemed) of members of the House Committee on Financial Services. His formal testimony covered a number of topics on...more
ISS has just released the results of its 2021 global benchmark policy survey, which, this year, actually comprises two surveys—one related to a broad array of policies and the other specifically addressing climate change....more
In one of the illustrative comments in Corp Fin’s just published sample comment letter on climate issues, Corp Fin asks companies to explain what consideration they may have given to providing in their SEC filings the same...more
This afternoon, Corp Fin posted a sample letter to companies containing illustrative comments regarding climate change disclosures. Presumably, the goal is to help companies think about and craft their climate-related...more
Just how reliable are those carbon footprints that many large companies have been publishing in their sustainability reports? Even putting aside concerns about greenwashing, what about those nebulous Scope 3 GHG emissions? ...more
So, what are the GHG emissions for a mega roll of Charmin Ultra Soft toilet paper? If you guessed 771 grams, you’d be right…or, at least, according to this article in the WSJ, you’d be consistent with the calculations of its...more