Efforts to unify reporting standards across private sector initiatives appears to be bearing fruit now that more than half of the companies included in S&P’s major indices are disclosing ESG data using the Sustainable Accounting Standards Board (SASB) framework.
Part of the busy alphabet soup of sustainability acronyms and abbreviations, SASB is the series of investor-friendly disclosures created by the California-based SASB Foundation, now part of the Value Reporting Foundation alongside other initiatives in an effort to reduce fragmentation in this space.
The group of 608 companies listed across S&P indices that have adopted SASB include not only S&P 500 names listed in the US – two-thirds of which have adopted the framework – but also companies listed across Asia, including Japan, in Australia, Europe, Latin America and Canada. Furthermore, 54% of the FTSE 100 Index report using SASB. The Value Reporting Foundation says that now about 1300 companies globally use SASB, a 215% increase on a year ago. It is a good improvement. Enough to ease off greenwashing concerns?
