Issues for Boards and Financial Sponsors 2024: ESG aspects

Each year we prepare a publication focussed on providing practical insights for Boards and GCs, and also for Financial Sponsors and their Portfolio Companies, on emerging and perennial issues which we expect to be topical in the coming months.

In the 2024 edition, we look at how businesses can navigate the shift towards a low carbon economy, and highlight five critical ESG areas boards and GCs should consider, including:

• Actionable transition plans: Review your climate ambitions and translate them into measurable actions and milestones. Consider using frameworks like the UK’s Transition Plan Taskforce for guidance. 
• Implications of disclosure and reporting: Understand from senior management and the audit committee how they are ensuring transparency and consistency across different divisions and jurisdictions. 
• Anti-greenwash vigilance: Understand the internal governance mechanisms in place to ensure green claims, in whatever form, are substantiated, balanced, consistent and comply with regulatory standards. 
• Growing due diligence requirements: Consider the impact of forthcoming human rights and environmental due diligence obligations on operations and any risks. 
• Directors’ duties focus: Use directors’ duties as a compass for ESG decision making, balancing stakeholder interests amidst a potentially increasingly polarised landscape.

The publications also explore the governance challenges presented by the rise of generative AI, the intensifying issues in cybersecurity, the latest regulatory shifts affecting M&A, topical issues around DEI and discuss a new role we are seeing NEDs take up in internal investigations - with some pointers to keep them right.  

Explore our Issues for Boards 2024 publication

Explore our Issues for Financial Sponsors and their portfolio companies 2024 publication