Forética presents the report 'Towards the new ESG Governance: Sustainable Boards of Directors', a study focused on putting the sustainability strategy at the center of organizations, not only at the highest management level, but within the Board of directors.
The systemic nature of the latest crises has shown the importance of companies' management of non-financial aspects. According to this study, during the first stage of the COVID-19 crisis, nine out of 10 sustainability indices have beaten their traditional counterparts and the most sustainable investment funds have exceeded 70% of their peers during the first quarter of 2020.
“The markets have awakened to a new reality. Crises now tend to be global and severe, as COVID-19 has shown. The systemic nature of the latter has shown the importance of managing non-financial aspects, in which seven of the 10 most significant risks are environmental or social. Given this scenario, the governance model of companies is being reviewed from various angles”, says Germán Granda, General Director of Forética.
“Those companies that have a Sustainability Commission are eight times more likely to have an AAA rating than those that do not make a sustainability mandate explicit on the board. Companies that either have a sustainability commission or give an explicit mandate to a pre-existing commission are twice as likely to be among the leaders” says Jaime Silos, Director of Corporate Development and Director of the Transparency, Good Governance and Integrity Cluster of Forética.
The Transparency, Good Governance and Integrity Cluster is a business platform coordinated by Forética and made up of 47 leading companies in Spain, which works with the aim of promoting a sustainable corporate governance model and addressing various issues related to the management of ESG aspects, transferring the main trends and serving as a meeting point for dialogue and exchange of business knowledge.