SEC Announces Adoption of Final Rules on Climate Disclosure

Breaking news on sustainability disclosure and reporting for corporate boards and management teams!

On March 6, the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) released its Final Rules on climate disclosures, designed to “enhance and standardize climate-related disclosures by public companies and in public offerings."

According to the SEC’s press release, one of our Top Stories below: “the final rules reflect the Commission’s efforts to respond to investors’ demand for more consistent, comparable, and reliable information about the financial effects of climate-related risks on a registrant’s operations, and how it manages those risks while balancing concerns about mitigating the associated costs of the rules."

We also include in our Top Stories several links reporting on the SEC announcement. The Final Rules will be published in the Federal Register and on the SEC web site.

There is also news out of the European Union as member countries blocked (at the last minute) proposed supply chain reporting rules. This demonstrates that EU nations are not necessarily “unanimous” in their quest for expanded and enhanced corporate and capital market disclosure relating to ESG topics.

In China, the world’s #2 economy, the country’s three large stock exchanges have rules in place now to require listed large companies to disclose a range of sustainability information (including disclosure climate change matters, ecosystem, anti-corruption, anti-briber, and rural revitalization efforts).

Important: China has adopted the EU approach on double materiality on corporate disclosure. Tim Mohin, former CEO of the Global Reporting Initiative, shares his thoughts in ESG News in another Top Story below – “The Dragon Roars: China’s New Sustainability Disclosure Mandate.”

The G&A Institute team will share more news and perspectives regarding the SEC Final Rule announcement in future issues of our Newsletter. There is much to review and digest, and as always, our team is available to provide counsel as these rules go into effect in the links in this issue.

This is just the introduction of G&A's Sustainability Highlights newsletter this week. Click here to view the full issue.