Company boards spend a good deal of time, as they should, planning for who’ll take over for the CEO. Most have a relatively short list of senior executives who are being groomed and evaluated for the job. You know if you’re on that list and where you rank, and there’s generally a set timeline for […]
Is a new day dawning at Exxon? Exxon shareholders elected two directors backed by an activist shareholder who called for changes in the oil giant’s response to climate change. It’s the first proxy campaign at a major US company where directors were the target and climate change was the issue. Anne Simpson of the California […]
Sometimes the most important news gets the least attention. Yesterday, to little fanfare, IHSMarkit, a financial data company, announced it would introduce a global registry for carbon credits using distributed ledger technology. It would link various registries around the world and provide a single data set for all projects and credits. Why is this so […]
Like spring blossoms, corporate proxy statements will start to arrive in the coming weeks. They are likely to reflect both the extraordinary events of 2020 and the continuation of trends that have been gathering momentum in recent years. Boards face a big challenge to address these issues effectively, and the quality of their communication will […]
We’ve written about the carbon market over the years. We’ve asked, for example, whether blockchain technology could boost its growth. We’ve highlighted the success of California’s cap-and-trade system, and we’ve suggested that the carbon market shares a lot of similarities with another asset class that grew from humble beginnings – emerging-market debt. Today, the carbon […]
When the investment story of 2020 is written, it will be a thick volume – a global pandemic, an uncanny rebound in stocks and aggressive interventions by the Fed. But there will also be a chapter on the return of the Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC), a deal structure last seen about a decade ago […]
Hardly a day goes by without major news about climate risk and how companies are responding to it. Amid this onslaught it can be hard to spot what’s truly significant. In just the past week, a group of investors sounded the alarm about the financial risks of climate change, Microsoft’s billion-dollar climate innovation fund joined […]
History has a way of repeating itself, particularly in finance. In the last financial crisis a dozen years ago, banks received taxpayer-backed bailouts and paid hefty bonuses to their executives. The uproar was loud and lasting. Now Wall Street seems poised for a repeat, after a massive federal coronavirus stimulus and a liquidity jolt from […]
Making progress on corporate climate risk disclosure is slow work. Partly it’s because the topic is complex, but it’s also because institutions are slow to change, even those that set themselves at the forefront. Last week brought two examples. First, investment giant BlackRock released its sustainability report, in which it said it identified 244 companies […]
In this charged environment, company actions that ordinarily would be routine can draw intense interest.