This session will discuss the meaning of corporate purpose, the way in which it is effectively implemented and embedded in a business, and the results of doing that in terms of financial and non-financial performance for both shareholders and other stakeholders.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize a deep understanding of what it means to have a meaningful purpose.
• Recognize a good appreciation of the governance arrangements required to implement corporate purpose.
• Identify how corporate purpose can be measured and evaluated.

Environmental, social, and governance issues can pose great risks as well as offer big opportunities that impact an organization’s ability to create long-term value. Demands across multiple stakeholders, including shareholders, are accelerating the need to address these issues through business strategies, investments, budgeting, reporting, assurance and more. This session will explore the sustainability and ESG drivers that are influencing the need for accounting and finance professionals to play a pivotal role within organizations as business partners or as trusted advisors. Join leaders in this session as they discuss how the accounting and finance profession can support the successful execution of sustainability strategies and take the lead on implementing processes for measuring and reporting on sustainability.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the drivers for the adoption of sustainability strategies and investments.
• Recognize the various stakeholder demands for sustainability measurement, reporting, and assurance.
• Identify the knowledge and skills needed to support the successful implementation of sustainability strategies

Join us for a 10 min - Stretch*s to Do From Your Desk Break by Stretch*d

As we transition from voluntary sustainability reporting to an era of mandatory disclosure, two new sets of standards entered the global stage in 2023: the ISSB Standards from the IFRS Foundation and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) under the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). This session will provide an overview and update on the new standards and how they will impact companies around the world, including in the US. Experts will provide insight into the ISSB's global baseline for investors versus the EU's double materiality assessment for a broad audience of European stakeholders. They will focus on how interoperability between the standards will help reduce the burden on preparers and will preview their future development and implementation. 

Learning Objectives:

• Identify latest updates and future steps for the ISSB Standards and Europe's ESRS
• Identify how companies need to prepare in terms of processes and materiality assessments.
• Identify comparisons between the new standards, how they differ and how they intersect.

This session focuses on the foundational elements of how to go about developing and implementing an effective and impactful sustainability strategy and program. 

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the fundamental elements of sustainability strategy development.
• Identify the considerations involved in developing an effective sustainability strategy.
• Identify the steps in a sustainability roadmap that lead to reporting and transformational value creation.

This session provides an explanation of carbon accounting and its practical applications, allowing you to implement it within your own role and gain insight into your organization’s carbon footprint.

With carbon accounting, organizations can make accurate assessments of where to focus their efforts on decarbonization. Carbon accounting serves as the essential language through which investors, businesses, finance professionals, and accounting experts can engage in meaningful discussions about climate change. Measuring an organization’s carbon footprint means it can be managed and reduced, contributing to the broader goals of addressing climate change at the organizational level. This session is valuable for accounting and finance professionals who wish to measure and disclose their organization’s footprint and identify reduction opportunities, as well as accounting firms seeking to provide assurance or advisory services.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the concept of carbon accounting and the key drivers.
• Identify the purpose and significance of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol) in establishing global standards for emissions accounting and reporting.
• Recall how to calculate carbon emissions, including familiarity with various calculation methods.
• Identify various disclosure frameworks and standards used for reporting carbon emissions.

The panel will offer an overview of ESG trends in Private Equity, and we will cover:

• Material ESG topics in PE
• Impact of emerging regulations and data standards
• Evolving audit requirements
• Roles of LPs, GPs, and portcos in ESG reporting
• Impact of Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI)

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the impact of emerging regulations and data standards.
• Identify the evolving audit requirements and the roles of LPs, GPs, and portcos in ESG reporting.
• Recognize the impact of Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI)
• Identify the material ESG topics in PE.

At the end of the session participants will be able to:

• Recognize the difference between a sustainability strategy driven by value creation and one driven by regulatory mandates
• Adopt management and operations techniques that reduce the risk of ineffective sustainability strategies
• Identify possible hidden benefits of adopting a sustainability strategy
• Implement metrics and KPIs that help monitory the effectiveness of sustainability programs
• Communicate sustainability strategies and required actions across an organization

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the difference between a sustainability strategy driven by value creation and one driven by regulatory mandates.
• Identify possible hidden benefits of adopting a sustainability strategy.
• Recognize management and operations techniques that reduce the risk of ineffective sustainability strategies
• Identify metrics and KPIs that help monitory the effectiveness of sustainability programs
• Identify sustainability strategies and required actions across an organization

*This is a REPLAY of our Keynote session to accommodate other time zones, this replay will have CPE*

This session will discuss the meaning of corporate purpose, the way in which it is effectively implemented and embedded in a business, and the results of doing that in terms of financial and non-financial performance for both shareholders and other stakeholders.

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize a deep understanding of what it means to have a meaningful purpose.
• Recognize a good appreciation of the governance arrangements required to implement corporate purpose.
• Identify how corporate purpose can be measured and evaluated.

*This is a REPLAY session to accommodate other time zones, this replay will have CPE*

Environmental, social, and governance issues can pose great risks as well as offer big opportunities that impact an organization’s ability to create long-term value. Demands across multiple stakeholders, including shareholders, are accelerating the need to address these issues through business strategies, investments, budgeting, reporting, assurance and more. This session will explore the sustainability and ESG drivers that are influencing the need for accounting and finance professionals to play a pivotal role within organizations as business partners or as trusted advisors. Join leaders in this session as they discuss how the accounting and finance profession can support the successful execution of sustainability strategies and take the lead on implementing processes for measuring and reporting on sustainability.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the drivers for the adoption of sustainability strategies and investments.
• Recognize the various stakeholder demands for sustainability measurement, reporting, and assurance.
• Identify the knowledge and skills needed to support the successful implementation of sustainability strategies.

*This is a replay to accommodate other time zones. This recording WILL NOT meet U.S. CPE standards.*

This session focuses on the foundational elements of how to go about developing and implementing an effective and impactful sustainability strategy and program.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the fundamental elements of sustainability strategy development.
• Identify the considerations involved in developing an effective sustainability strategy.
• Identify the steps in a sustainability roadmap that lead to reporting and transformational value creation.

*This is a replay to accommodate other time zones. This recording WILL NOT meet U.S. CPE standards.*

Learning Objectives:

• Recognize the difference between a sustainability strategy driven by value creation and one driven by regulatory mandates.
• Identify possible hidden benefits of adopting a sustainability strategy.
• Recognize management and operations techniques that reduce the risk of ineffective sustainability strategies.
• Identify metrics and KPIs that help monitory the effectiveness of sustainability programs.
• Identify sustainability strategies and required actions across an organization.

This session is for resource purposes only, there is no CPE.

This is presented by Amir Amel-Zadeh, Associate Professor of Accounting with Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford.

We are witnessing a fundamental reshaping of capitalism and the finance function at organizations requiring new ways of how we measure economic performance and value creation. This will have profound implications for financial managers in organizations from how they make capital budgeting decisions, how they incentivize staff, to what gets measured and reported to capital markets. As sustainability considerations become integrated into strategic decision making the boundaries between the sustainability, strategy and finance will become ever more blurred.

This talk will discuss what is driving this trend and what it means for financial managers drawing from work at the Oxford Rethinking Performance Initiative and academic research.

This session covers major sustainability reporting requirements around the world and the business landscape, including the risks and challenges companies are currently facing in implementing and maturing their sustainability reporting systems. The session will also include a discussion of the digital reporting aspect of sustainability reporting.

Learning Objectives:

• Compare major sustainability reporting requirements around the world.
• Identify prominent risks and challenges companies face in implementing their sustainability reporting.
• Analyze the importance of the digital reporting in communicating sustainability information to users.

This session will provide professional services firms with an understanding of the key elements involved in developing and implementing an ESG/Sustainability Strategy for internal operations and a strategy to provide ESG/Sustainability Services to the marketplace.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify professional services firms with an understanding of the key elements involved in developing and implementing an ESG/Sustainability Strategy for internal operations.
• Identify professional services firms with an understanding of the key elements involved in developing and delivering ESG/Sustainability Services to the marketplace.

Responsible stewardship of nature is essential to society’s well-being. Businesses rely on natural resources as inputs for production throughout their value chains and their business activities affect nature. This session introduces what nature change means for business including how business activities impact nature loss and the risks and opportunities businesses face through their dependency on nature. Regulators and investors are interested in how companies manage the financial impacts of nature. The session will cover the regulatory landscape around nature and the various standards and frameworks to report on nature-related risks and opportunities. The session will also explain natural capital accounting which enables measurement of the contribution of the environment to the economy or business and the impact of the economy or business on the environment. This session will cover the steps necessary for companies to get started on their nature journey.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify how nature is increasingly important in business considerations
• Recognize the regulatory landscape around nature and the various voluntary nature-related reporting frameworks
• Recall the building blocks of natural capital accounting.
• Recognize the steps to developing a plan for nature action.

Join us for a 10 min - Stretch*s for Stress Relief Break by Stretch'd.

The session will provide an engaging discussion amongst the panelists where they will express their views as to the future of sustainability. Questions will be posed such as... Where will businesses focus their efforts and how will the views of consumers and investors shape these efforts? How will the actions of regulators effect the landscape? Where are standard setters headed and how do you see the reporting ecosystem evolving? How will the environment, biodiversity loss and social goals factor in the equation? How will the sourcing and consumption of energy evolve and how will energy transition be positively and negatively impacted by innovation?

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the diverse and disparate views of experts of the future of sustainability as it relates to business, regulations, standards and frameworks, energy transition and innovation, amongst others
• Recognize the future of sustainability.

Explore the critical intersection of tax and sustainability in our session, "Where is Tax in a Sustainability Strategy?" Gain insights into the evolving regulatory landscape, investor expectations, and sustainability frameworks, and how these factors impact taxation. Discover the strategic implications of integrating tax planning into sustainability initiatives and recognize the substantial value tax brings to a company's decarbonization efforts. Additionally, we'll delve into the ways tax providers can support their clients in prioritizing sustainability within their tax strategies, ensuring a harmonious alignment of financial and environmental objectives.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the regulatory, investor, and sustainable framework trends as they relate to Tax.
• Recognize specifically how Tax fits into sustainability from a strategic standpoint.
• Recognize how Tax has tremendous value in a company’s decarbonization strategies/initiatives.

An engaging discussion amongst Sustainable Finance Experts surrounding the Green Finance Environment, including Sustainable Bond Financing and Lending.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the Sustainability Related Bond Ecosystem, including Green, Social, Sustainability and Sustainability-Linked Bonds.
• Identify the Sustainability Related Lending Ecosystem, including Green, Social and Sustainability Linked Loans.

The panel is designed to broaden attendees understanding of the ESG assurance landscape. Topics covered will include services offered, methodology, and regulations requiring reporting and assurance of ESG metrics in the US and EU. The panel will also share their experience and guidance for companies preparing for assurance of their ESG metrics.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify regulations requiring reporting and assurance of ESG metrics in the US and EU
• Identify insights into preparing for assurance over ESG metrics

*This is a REPLAY session to accommodate other time zones, this replay will have CPE*

This session covers major sustainability reporting requirements around the world and the business landscape, including the risks and challenges companies are currently facing in implementing and maturing their sustainability reporting systems. The session will also include a discussion of the digital reporting aspect of sustainability reporting.

Learning Objectives:

• Compare major sustainability reporting requirements around the world.
• Identify prominent risks and challenges companies face in implementing their sustainability reporting.
• Analyze the importance of the digital reporting in communicating sustainability information to users.

*This is a REPLAY session to accommodate other time zones, this replay will have CPE*

Explore the critical intersection of tax and sustainability in our session, "Where is Tax in a Sustainability Strategy?" Gain insights into the evolving regulatory landscape, investor expectations, and sustainability frameworks, and how these factors impact taxation. Discover the strategic implications of integrating tax planning into sustainability initiatives and recognize the substantial value tax brings to a company's decarbonization efforts. Additionally, we'll delve into the ways tax providers can support their clients in prioritizing sustainability within their tax strategies, ensuring a harmonious alignment of financial and environmental objectives.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the regulatory, investor, and sustainable framework trends as they relate to Tax.
• Recognize specifically how Tax fits into sustainability from a strategic standpoint.
• Recognize how Tax has tremendous value in a company’s decarbonization strategies/initiatives.