Many civil society organizations over the past year have been applying pressure on the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to shift its policies on companies’ public disclosure requirements, particularly regarding to the incorporation of ESG concerns. In recent months, there have been several significant developments on this front, including:
· In June this year, an Investor Advisory Committee was established at the SEC, which has been formed in order to give investors a greater voice in the Commission’s work. This committee’s members are from a diversity of constituencies, including non-profit organization’s helping individual investors, consumer watchdog organizations, social investment funds, academia and private investment funds. Click here to read more.
· In light of the breadth of the agenda of the SEC Investor Advisory Committee, a decision was taken in September to break it up into several sub-committees in order to address specific categories of regulatory issues. The three sub-committees formed are: an Investor Education Subcommittee; an Investor as Purchaser Subcommittee; an Investor as Shareholder Subcommittee. Among others, two interesting items under review by the Shareholder Subcommittee includes ‘disclosure issues’ and ‘international issues’. Click here to read more.
· On 27 October 2009, an existing SEC policy that had allowed companies to exclude shareholder resolutions requesting information on the financial risks associated with environmental, human rights and other social issues facing companies was reversed, meeting one of four key requests made by the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR) in June this year. Click here to read more.