FVC2320. Identifying and Mitigating ESG-related Litigation and Enforcement Risk and Exposure

ESG and Sustainability continues to be a rapidly developing body of issues and regulation impacting companies globally. Across the enterprise, boards and management are balancing the risks and opportunities by evaluating and implementing strategy aligned to value proposition, ensuring compliance with ESG-related regulation, and engaging with myriad stakeholder expectations and demands, among other actions. ESG covers a broad array of environmental, social and governance topics, many of which create divides across geographic and political lines, and almost weekly there are new regulatory developments across the globe. So many that it can be challenging to keep up with the requirements and then evaluate how compliance impacts an organization. And managing stakeholder expectations and demands sometimes exposes an organization to litigation – for example, social or environmental justice – or activist activity. This session explores ESG-related enforcement and litigation risks and trends that organizations are exposed to in today’s environment and the actions that organizations are taking to mitigate the risk.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify ESG-related regulation risks and trends in the US, including those emerging from the Security and Exchange Commission’s proposed (or adopted) climate-related and other ESG-related rules; the Federal Trade Commission’s Green Guides on “green” marketing; New York and California state laws on transparency and reporting requirements for certain ESG issues and industries; and other emerging regulation
• Compare ESG-related regulation in the US to similar developments in other parts of the world, including other major financial markets, and evaluate how organizations are keeping up and managing compliance
• Identify sources of ESG-related litigation and enforcement risk in the US, including from the Securities and Exchange Commission Division of Enforcement’s Climate and ESG Task Force, the rise of class action lawsuits based on ESG claims, environmental justice trends and social justice trends
• Recognize the impact of the anti-ESG movement in the US, including activist investor actions against organizations and how differing policy at the state and Federal level may impact an organization