Opalesque Industry Update - Sustainability reporting is rapidly moving from a niche issue focused on by a handful of companies to one of global importance. Amidst growing worldwide concerns about the environmental, social and governance impact that businesses contend with internally and the impact their activities have on their stakeholders, institutional investors are putting greater emphasis on sustainability reporting. As the Global Reporting Initiative works to transition its sustainability guidelines into global standards, it is clear that interest in sustainability isn’t likely to diminish anytime soon. Given the rising importance of sustainability, the New York Hedge Fund Roundtable recently held its first day-long Sustainability Investment Leadership Conference, hosted in conjunction with the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants, where conference attendees were surveyed about the topic. “How a company makes its money has become a critical factor in the 21st Century, because how it makes its money will have an impact on society,” Mervyn E. King, former chairman of the International Integrated Reporting Council and chairman emeritus of the Global Reporting Initiative, told conference attendees. “Integrative reporting has captured the attention of people around the world… it is an idea whose time has come,” said King, who was among several high profile speakers and panelists at the conference. Roundtable members are becoming increasingly optimistic about the merits of sustainability reporting, based on a comparison of the survey responses from a Roundtable sustainability panel last year compared to this year. 60% of respondents from this year’s survey indicated that they believe sustainability is worth the additional time and money such reports require, up from a year ago when only 46% of respondents felt this way. Similarly, 65% of respondents think sustainability reporting is of equal importance for all companies, regardless of size, compared with a year ago when only 41% of respondents felt this way. “Though sustainability reporting and the guidelines surrounding it remain nascent areas, there is no doubt that the data within these reports is of paramount importance for understanding how well any individual company is poised to succeed over the long-term,” said Timothy P. Selby, President of the New York Hedge Fund Roundtable and a partner at Alston & Bird. New York Hedge Fund Roundtable members had the opportunity to weigh in on sustainability reporting both at the Sustainability Investment Leadership Conference as well as through an online electronic poll. Of the respondents to this survey, 20% were fund managers; 12% were allocators; 18% were risk management or trading; 32% were service providers; 14% were CPAs; and 4% were other industry participants. Following are some of the other key findings of that survey:
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Industry Updates
Hedge fund industry embraces merits of sustainability reporting
Monday, May 23, 2016
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