04 Jun 2014   

On 26 March 2014, sustainability advocacy group Ceres, together with major institutional investors, announced an initiative to engage global stock exchanges via the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE) on a possible uniform Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting standard for all exchange members. This is an attempt to bring more consistent and comparable information to all markets, and ensure that no stock exchange will be at a competitive disadvantage for taking leadership in this space.

Dr Patricia Tan, Associate Professor (Accounting), Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, assesses the situation in Singapore in the article "ESG Disclosure Among Singapore-listed Companies" in the IS Chartered Accountant Journal.

As material ESG issues become part and parcel of today’s investment decisions and listed companies in other Asian economies are providing more and improved ESG disclosures, Singapore companies can no longer ignore the need to improve on their ESG communications regardless of whether ESG disclosure is mandated or not. Otherwise, there could be a potential loss of investors’ interest in SGX firms if the trend of social investing becomes more and more important in the asset management industry.