Mandatory ESG Reporting. A Comparative Analysis of Brazil, the United States, and Europe
49 Pages Posted: 10 Jun 2022
Date Written: april 7, 2022
Abstract
As the world has entered the 21st century, discussions about corporate social responsibility have endured within business and law. However, today's exciting questions are not about whether corporate social responsibility should exist but how it should exist. Companies wishing to continue in the market need to pay attention to the desires of the population and the new practices of consumption and priorities. Not only companies that are part of the Stock Exchange or Funds, but all companies need to pay attention to this movement, from micro-companies to multinationals from all sectors, as ESG is a movement that in the future will encompass everyone. However, investors often complain that the availability and quality of company-level ESG disclosures are not sufficient to make informed investment decisions. In response to this gap between the demand for ESG information by investors and the provision of accurate information by companies, several countries have started mandatory ESG disclosure regulations to force companies to disclose information on traditional ESG financial disclosures or in specialized independent reports. I present here the opinions of authors for and against mandatory disclosure and current scenarios in Brazil, the United States, and Europe concerning disclosure. I present my conclusion regarding the need for not only better regulation by the securities commissions regarding ESG matters, but also the need to ‘raise the bar’ of what we currently have by the working together with the various regulatory entities and policy makers that cover the ‘E’, the ‘S’ and the ‘G’ issues of companies for an effective improvement of the planet as a whole.
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