Key players in Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance share insights in a members-only conversation.
In our third Virtual Interactive Session in August (see also here and here), NeuGroup members from across our network met to discuss their various approaches and focus on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) initiatives. This VIS covered the gamut of ESG screens on investment opportunities to debt issuance and company ratings for corporate treasury departments, along with investor relations, corporate communications and sustainability offices and their respective challenges.
NeuGroup Founder Joseph Neu started things off with opening remarks about the breadth of ESG programs.
- “ESG is a big topic,” he said. “It overlaps with a lot of different areas, so it can be challenging to break it down into who cares about what and act to respond to interest by market participants, your corporations and all your stakeholders.”
Setting the stage for working groups. The interaction kicked off by examples of ESG initiatives at two member companies sets the stage for prospective working groups to meet on refining, focusing and ensuring the performance of ESG-related efforts, be they, for example:
- investing corporate cash to promote the proliferation of ESG aligned with their own corporate values,
- proactively seeking a more diverse selection of banks and financial partners
- impact investing to improve diversity and inclusion, or more generally, the communities where they operate
- financing projects linked to sustainability efforts with proper governance around the use of proceeds; or
- ensuring that the ESG scores their firms are receiving are based on accurate and relevant information, with governance around what and how that information is disclosed to whom.
Virtual Interactive Sessions also include polling questions for participants, which allow them to share their perspective and come away with an understanding of their peers’ approaches. In this case, participants shared information on their personal role with their organization as well as the degree to which they allocate resources toward enhancing disclosures for their ESG initiatives.
To learn more about the impactful takeaways from these and other discussions, stay tuned to NeuGroup Insights.
