2024 Governance Outlook (NACD)

The National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) | 02 Jan 2024| Paper|

The 2024 Governance Outlook report provides corporate directors and senior executives with a forward-looking view of major business and governance issues that are likely to require board focus in 2024.

A debate that focused on what is needed to provide business leaders with the renewed confidence they need to re-engage with the world around them and communicate their points of view, either on the issues within their control or the world around them.

Border to Coast issue stats showing how seriously they’re taking their role as Investors:

• Voted for 81% of environmental shareholder resolutions 

AI systems like ChatGPT are trained with text from Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and other huge archives of bullshit, alongside plenty of actual facts (including Wikipedia and text ripped off from professional writers).

By embracing sustainability trends, businesses can make a positive impact on the environment, society, the economy and committed Investors.

Sleeping with the frenemy? As the US-China relationship continues to evolve, the impact of this investment surge will be closely watched by both investors and policymakers.

As the voting influence of fund managers has grown alongside their assets, and pressure increases on their clients to take more control of stewardship, the current system is under increased scrutiny.

Cruse: addressing safety concerns and ongoing investigations is essential for Cruise to uphold its commitment to ensuring the safety of autonomous vehicles.

Climate related disasters will affect multiple sectors and cause systemic failures across Europe, leading to greater economic losses. No coherent mechanism is currently in place for countries to report losses says the European Environment Agency

The term Stranded assets could as easily be applied to the lung and other damage done by smoking. We had to use a cartoon of lungs ‘smoking’ to avoid distress because the actual image of smoke damaged lungs was too gruesome. Need a light guv?

Me: “I want a magical Unicorn for Christmas”….

As the conference progresses, it will be crucial to sustain the momentum and ensure the effective implementation of the agreement to make a real difference in the lives of those most affected by climate change.

As our planet approaches its limits, we know this has to stop. With brilliantly powerful videos like this from Richard Curtis and the team at MakeMyMoneyMatter, it’s getting hard to ignore. They may have the ideas, we all have the power. Let’s use it wisely.

The Commission has announced it will finalise its bond issuances for this year with an up to €4bn auction on 27 November.

Do Sovereign Wealth Funds Reduce Fiscal Policy Pro-cyclicality?

New Evidence Using a Non-Parametric Approach from the IMF publishes their take on the impact this important group had

In this week's Friday 5: 🚀 The launch of the Carbon Accounting Alliance 📜 CCLA Investment Management release its Modern Slavery UK Benchmark 🥐 We invite you to a DE&I breakfast 🍦 Unilever have shaken up the ice cream industry with a new announcement 💰 We look forward to learning more about capital as a Force For Good #sustainability #newsletter

Forget what you think you know about investing. The forces of disruption are coming, and they'll change the way that asset owners invest their money forever.

We’re all for the overall aim: moving away from a reactionary approach to individual issues, towards a more coherent and proactive engagement in the political arena, where companies make considered choices about when and where to engage, and do so meaningfully. Says Giles Gibbons

In February 2024, the Sub-Group 1 working on Usability will publish a compendium of market practices, showing how different sector entities are using the EU Taxonomy and the wider the EU Sustainable Finance framework. 

'Carbon skid marks' A new advert on Channel 4 has been turning heads this week – depicting the business and political elite in a new light: in their ‘carbon skid marked’ underpants. Giles Gibbons suggest you let the video show you what this looks like.