The World Economic Forum has developed a set of Climate Governance Principles for boards of directors, with a view to enabling non-executive directors (NEDs)to gain climate awareness and skills, embed climate considerations into board decision-making, and understand and act upon the risks and opportunities that the climate emergency poses to the long-term resilience and business…
Category: climate change
Chevron’s Climate Lobbying Report is a Joke – The Brick House Cooperative
Sludge’s Donald Shaw calls Chevron’s report on lobbying expenditures in response to majority vote on a shareholder proposal greenwashing.. Earlier this week, Chevron quietly released its climate lobbying report. In it, the company lists its affiliations with many of the largest fossil fuel industry lobbying groups in the world and then tries to spin each…
Proxy Contest at Exxon
Engine No. 1 has formally nominated the four directors it intends to install to Exxon’s board, launching a campaign the activist says will “ensure a clean break” for the oil major. The move comes less than two months after newly established activist Engine No. 1 wrote a letter to Exxon’s board criticizing the company’s performance….
UN report puts climate change at heart of insurance risk assessment
A report produced by the United Nations (UN) in collaboration with 22 major insurance firms has suggested that the insurance industry needs to adopt an integrated approach in order to manage future climate change risk. The final report of the UN’s Environment Programme’s Principles for Sustainable Insurance Initiative, which aims to pilot recommendations from the…
Companies sign up for new ESG stakeholder metrics | Corporate Secretary
Dozens of business leaders this week committed their organizations to using a new set of ESG-related metrics and disclosures developed in collaboration with the Big Four accounting firms. The 61 signatories, revealed at the World Economic Forum’s Davos conference, will start using ‘stakeholder capitalism metrics’ as an initiative intended to speed up convergence among the…
British Hedge Fund Billionaire Takes Climate Fight to S&P 500 – WSJ
A billionaire hedge-fund manager is bankrolling an unprecedented campaign to force dozens of the world’s largest companies to publish carbon-emission reduction plans and put them up for shareholder vote. Frustrated by the pace at which corporations are cutting emissions, Christopher Hohn is backing a global effort to speed things up. He is working with nonprofit…
State Street Moves Forward on Climate Change| Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
State Street has expressed its belief that “the COVID-19 crisis accelerates the need for transformative change to address climate change” and that it will continue to “encourage companies to disclose how they are addressing both climate risks and opportunities through engagement and voting on shareholder proposals.” In addition, State Street recently became a member of…
Biden Executive Order Opens Door to Rollback Or Reversal of Anti-Shareholder Rules
President Biden has moved quickly on his promise to make science-based climate change policy a core initiative of his administration. That includes an Executive Order that looks like it is designed to form the basis for reversal of two controversial Labor Department rules pushed through at the end of the Trump administration limiting the rights…
BlackRock should disclose political activity, pension funds say – The Washington Post
Public pension funds overseeing more than $1 trillion are piling pressure on BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, to ramp up disclosure of its political activities in the wake of the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. In a Monday letter to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, 24 officials from retirement funds accuse the Wall…
Greenwashing Wall Street’s Invisible Hand – The Daily Poster
The chief executive of the world’s largest asset manager was rewarded with laudatory headlines this week for once again promising that his firm, BlackRock, will use its market power to aid the fight against climate change. But CEO Larry Fink’s company has a long history of helping vote down environmental initiatives — and kept doing…
