SEC May Soon Require Affirmative Climate Change Disclosure By Public Companies | Levenfeld Pearlstein, LLC jdsupra.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jdsupra.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Recent calls for racial equity and government regulators' increasing focus on social and environmental concerns make this a good time for companies to integrate environmental justice into their environmental, social and governance efforts, say independent consultant Stacey Halliday, Julius Redd at Beveridge & Diamond and Jesse Glickstein at Hewlett Packard.
Monday, May 10, 2021
While the U.S. Securities and Exchange (SEC) has not been very active in holding companies accountable for failing to report climate-related information, litigation under state provisions and the growing urgency of climate-related risks has shown the need for more active enforcement.
In recent years, states have pursued companies for allegedly making misleading financial disclosures in violation of state statutes. In 2015, for example, the New York Attorney General entered into a settlement with Peabody Energy Corporation involving misleading disclosures under New York-specific statutes. After subpoenaing internal records that showed the company had made internal market projections showing severe negative impacts from certain potential laws and regulations and had failed to disclose those projections to the public, the company
SEC Redoubles Focus on Climate Change, ESG Disclosures | WilmerHale jdsupra.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from jdsupra.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In late 2020, rumor had it that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) under the Biden Administration would likely move to encourage or require more robust disclosure of environmental-social-governance (ESG) and climate-related risks.1 Therefore, it came as no surprise when the Acting Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Allison Herren Lee, released a statement on February 24, 2021, directing the SEC s Division of Corporate Finance to focus on climate-related disclosure in public company filings.2 Although the statement did not apply to the municipal bond market, we have observed that the SEC s Office of Municipal Securities often follows suit after the Division of Corporate Finance releases guidance on risk disclosure matters. For example, on May 4, 2020, SEC Chairman Jay Clayton and Director of the Office of Municipal Securities Rebecca Olsen issued a statement encouraging municipal securities issuers and obligors to provide disclosure relating to the effect