Finch & Beak is a leading European consulting firm in the field of ESG, sustainability strategy and creating positive impact. Over the past 24 years, we have worked with more than 150 corporate clients across Europe, trained over 5000 managers, and worked with top-level business schools from around the world. To help our fast-growing client portfolio accelerate its sustainability performance, we are expanding our team and are looking for a Business Consultant.
How can a materiality assessment be used to effectively accelerate a company’s sustainability performance? On September 23rd, Finch & Beak organized a webinar focused on materiality activation: transforming the materiality assessment from a reporting tool to the steppingstone for activation of company’s sustainability program. In this article, you can find a summary of the session including three tips for a successful activation of materiality.
If there is one thing that the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, it is that society can face major challenges, virtually overnight. Companies need to have a sharp view on both short-term impacts and risks further on the horizon in order to steer their business and build resilience to deal with change. Capturing emerging risks in the ESG approach is therefore essential. Additionally, as of 2023, the EU Commission requires companies to apply the concept of “Double Materiality” as part of its new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). One of the main questions that therefore arises is: how do you ensure your materiality assessment covers these new perspectives on materiality?
Finch & Beak is a leading European consulting firm in the field of strategy, ESG and sustainability. Over the past 24 years, we have worked with more than 150 corporate clients across Europe, trained over 5000 managers, and worked with top-level business schools from around the world. To help our fast-growing client portfolio accelerate its sustainability performance, we are expanding our Rotterdam team and are looking for a Business Consultant.
As the world faced the global pandemic, our working and learning models were transformed, turning ourselves toward the telecommunication industry to ask for new digital solutions and reliable internet connections. At the same time, the digital gap became more apparent, leaving those who can’t afford internet access in a vulnerable position. Building on its adaptability and resilience during the early months of the Covid crisis, Telenet further strengthened its commitment to society and offered a new service to bridge the digital divide.
As sustainability-labelled financing is expected to surge in 2021, companies are gearing up to get their fair share of it. Real estate, an industry that is typically capital-intensive, has a particularly great opportunity to tap into this source of financing. European real estate companies, however, appear to be lagging behind on ESG performance compared to their global peers, and may risk losing out.
As investors increasingly integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria in their decision making processes, companies need to cater to this information need. Developing and transmitting a clear ESG Equity Story is key in this: communicating about the firm’s ESG approach and performance in a coherent and transparent manner toward investor audiences. Finch & Beak has assembled a pilot benchmark as a probe for the current status quo, assessing 21 companies’ sustainability programs (‘Be Good’) and their ESG Equity Stories (‘Tell It’). A striking finding is that companies appear to engage in ESG ‘greywashing’ (antonym of greenwashing), by underleveraging their ESG performance in the communication towards investor audiences.
With the Dow Jones Sustainability Index 2020 results as a fresh starting point, in this session we'll dive into the details of how to use the Corporate Sustainability Assessment as a driver to accelerate ESG performance in your organization. Very practical guidance is coming from guest speaker Marc Boissonnet, Executive Vice President Corporate & External Affairs at Bureau Veritas. He will tell more about how his company achieved the status of DJSI Industry Leader for the global Professional Services industry in 2020 following a dedicated improvement journey throughout the organization.
Join us for the second instalment of Finch & Beak's ESG Acceleration Webinar series, aimed at speeding up sustainability performance and building resilience in the decade to deliver - especially during these challenging times. In December, we'll share more practical insights on effective ESG Equity Stories, using DJSI to accelerate performance and #BuildBackBetter to take your sustainability program to the next level.
After a prolonged submission period for the Corporate Sustainability Assessment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, last Friday S&P Dow Jones Indices announced the results of the annual Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) review. Arkema, Storebrand, Essity and Wendel Group are among the newcomers in this year’s DJSI Indices, while Alphabet Inc, Bank of America and UPS are among those who dropped out. As our summarizing infographic illustrates, this year the percentage of participating companies increased by an astonishing 19% compared to 2019.