ESG Governance

This event took place on Wednesday 12 July 2023

Download the slides here

Businesses are stepping up to grasp the ESG agenda. The number of UK companies making net zero carbon emission promises, for example, has multiplied rapidly following the COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow. Meanwhile, regulation is evolving at pace too.

From corporate governance to sustainability reporting, national and supra-national regulators are making ever more demands. Increasingly, this regulation is focused on corporate structure, regarded as a lever for transformation. So much so that some organisations are having to reconsider complex and unwieldy structures, and rethink how they manage intricate reporting that spans the entire value chain.

General counsels and company secretaries are in the front line of the environmental, social and governance agenda. As ESG moves centre-stage for their organisations, more than two thirds of the legal and CoSec leaders expect their role to change in the context of ESG.

Therefore, we looked at the G of the ESG in this section and how the G impact the CoSec day to day role.

Speakers

Matt Timmons, Partner, PwC

Matt is PwC UK Legal’s ESG Leader and sits on the Global Legal ESG leadership team. He leads a number of global regulatory and compliance projects.

He has experience of working with US multinationals and has led a number of governance projects for US multinationals in view of key regulatory changes in the UK.

Some of Matt’s other clients include FTSE 100, large global private business and US Fortune 500 companies. Matt is currently leading legal and regulatory teams to support a number of Fortune Global 500 clients assess the impact of EU CSRD and develop a roadmap for implementation.

Matt is a member of PwC’s Global CSRD competency centre and sits on a number PwC Global ESG steering committees for our Tax, Legal and People business.

Jade Hobbs, Senior Manager, PwC

Jade has work on a number of ESG projects relating to the governance aspects of UK Mandatory Climate Disclosure and advising FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 clients on how the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) will apply to the legal entities in their group and the implications of CSRD from a subsidiary governance perspective.

Jade has extensive corporate governance experience and has assisted clients with reviewing their existing governance frameworks and advising areas for improvements to align the group with regulations, best practice and the desired governance maturity level. Jade often works as part of a multidisciplinary team of governance, tax and risk specialists to ensure the governance structures are practical and aligned to the operating model and tax structure of the group.

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