Companies struggle to digest ‘alphabet soup’ of ESG arbiters

The future of financial reporting for environmental, social and governance investing arrived with a bang at the chicken farms of Mississippi last month. The US poultry producer Sanderson Farms, which traces its roots back to the 1940s, received a shareholder request to align its disclosures with the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board. The San Francisco-based SASB develops guidelines that help companies to report ESG issues with a financially material effect, including climate change and employees’ safety. Sanderson Farms could allow the proposal to go to a vote, seek to have it blocked by the Securities and Exchange Commission or resolve the issue with the shareholder before any vote takes place. The company, which processes more than 1m birds a week for grocery stores, declined to comment.

The shareholder request arrived as awareness builds that ESG investing needs a standardised reporting approach in the battle to fight climate change and advance other social causes. Recognition of these causes was reinforced at the UN General Assembly meetings last month. Read Full Article - Financial Times, October 6, 2019