Climate-change: BlackRock votes against fewer directors as more companies adopt TCFD framework for risk disclosures, panel hears
- Adoption of the rigorous TCFD disclosure framework is shooting up across Asia, a BlackRock executive said at SCMP’s Climate Change Hong Kong Summit
- Use of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures approach is welcome, but companies must move beyond mere compliance, panellists said
More companies in Asia are adopting a rigorous international framework for disclosing climate risk, resulting in fewer companies seeing the world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, vote against re-election of their directors, its regional head of investment stewardship said during a panel discussion.
“As an asset manager, we need a little bit more coherence in the ESG [environmental, social and governance] rankings,” he said.
BlackRock has been looking at whether companies are reporting according to the TCFD framework, released by the Basel-based Financial Stability Board in 2017, since last year. TCFD requires scenario planning for different levels of global warming, as well as the disclosure of both medium and long-term emissions targets.
“If the companies are not reporting by TCFD, if they don’t have the data on emissions, if they don’t have targets – which is part of the TCFD reporting pillars – then we vote against [the re-election] of directors,” Gill said.
