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ESG & sustainabilityFebruary 24 2021

What do boards know about ESG? Not much, says study

Boards are left exposed by lack of substantial ESG experience, according to research by New York University.
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Should you have missed the NYU Stern’s Center for Sustainable Business research on the environmental, social and governance (ESG) credentials of board directors, we’ve put together a neat summary of its striking findings. And should you have read the report, you may still find its visual representation rather punchy.  

It turns out that board members of some of the US’s largest companies do not have much to show when it comes to sustainability. NYU Stern looked into the biographies of the 1188 directors sitting on Fortune 100 companies’ boards, as they appeared on Bloomberg and corporate sources in 2019, and found that only 29% had some ESG credentials. Not bad, you say, for a relatively new area? Well, as the report’s authors point out, looking at the individual components of the three categories forming ESG paints a less rosy picture. 

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Silvia Pavoni is editor in chief of The Banker. Silvia also serves as an advisory board member for the Women of the Future Programme and for the European Risk Management Council, and is part of the London council of non-profit WILL, Women in Leadership in Latin America. In 2019, she was awarded an honorary fellowship by City University of London.
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