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Climate-change: BlackRock votes against fewer directors as more companies adopt TCFD framework for risk disclosures, panel hears
- Adoption of the rigorous TCFD disclosure framework is shooting up across Asia, a BlackRock executive said at SCMP’s Climate Change Hong Kong Summit
- Use of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures approach is welcome, but companies must move beyond mere compliance, panellists said
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More companies in Asia are adopting a rigorous international framework for disclosing climate risk, resulting in fewer companies seeing the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, vote against re-election of their directors, its regional head of investment stewardship said during a panel discussion.
The move towards the globally comparable TCFD (Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures) framework is a welcome one, said Amar Gill, managing director and head of investment stewardship in Asia-Pacific for BlackRock, speaking in a panel discussion at the Post’s inaugural Climate Change Hong Kong Summit on Thursday.
“As an asset manager, we need a little bit more coherence in the ESG [environmental, social and governance] rankings,” he said.
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BlackRock has been looking at whether companies are reporting according to the TCFD framework, released by the Basel-based Financial Stability Board in 2017, since last year. TCFD requires scenario planning for different levels of global warming, as well as the disclosure of both medium and long-term emissions targets.
In Hong Kong, a cross-agency regulatory steering group led by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the Securities and Futures Commission announced in December 2020 that it aims to align listed firms’ climate-related disclosures with TCFD recommendations by 2025.
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