Library | Sustainable Finance Practices
Governance and directors’ duties
Resources on the responsibilities of boards and directors in overseeing sustainability, ensuring accountability, fulfilling fiduciary duties, and promoting long-term value creation.
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Anti-harassment policy and the startup labor market
This paper studies the effects of state-level NDA-weakening laws on hiring in over 50,000 U.S. VC-backed startups from 2014–2022. Anti-harassment reforms reduce female hiring by approximately 8%, concentrated among junior women and small startups, while also triggering internal restructuring including more female promotions and male manager departures.
Excessive executive compensation: Investor guidance
Published by ICCR in April 2026, this report provides investor guidance on addressing excessive executive compensation. It outlines proxy voting guidelines, pay thresholds, and stewardship frameworks to help investors challenge the growing gap between CEO and worker pay, and promote greater accountability and long-term value creation.
Stablecoins in Africa: Translating global principles into local regulatory practice
This paper is the African Chapter of GDF's Global Stablecoin Regulatory Playbook. It examines how global stablecoin regulatory principles can be applied across Africa's diverse markets, addressing reserve management, consumer protection, AML/CFT compliance, and cross-border coordination, while accounting for local financial infrastructure, dollarisation risks, and varying supervisory capacity.
Digital Policy Hub
The Digital Policy Hub, hosted by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), is a research and policy platform focused on the governance of transformative technologies. It supports research, analysis and collaboration on topics including artificial intelligence, data governance, digital security, democracy, outer space and environmental impacts of digitalisation.
Navigating global risks in the Pacific 2026
A Pacific-focused commentary drawing on the World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report 2026, examining how geopolitical fragmentation, digital transformation, climate volatility and workforce pressures are reshaping operating environments across Australia, New Zealand and the broader Pacific region.
The hidden benefit of ESG
This study examines 2,386 U.S.-listed firms from 2016 to 2021 and finds a causal link between higher ESG scores and fewer financial statement restatements in the post-2019 Business Roundtable Statement period. The findings position ESG as a rational risk management tool and challenge the premise underlying anti-ESG legislation.
Five differentiators of outperforming family-owned businesses in India
McKinsey analysed about 300 publicly listed Indian family-owned businesses to identify five differentiators of top performers: core operational excellence, effective generational transition, portfolio diversification, talent and culture, and robust governance. FOBs contribute more than 75 percent of India's GDP and outperform non-family-owned businesses on revenue growth and shareholder returns.
Passing the baton: Creating value through CEO succession at family businesses
This McKinsey report analyses CEO succession at family-owned businesses, drawing on 200 publicly traded and 170 private FOBs globally. It finds that succession on average erodes shareholder value, but top-performing FOBs can achieve the opposite by applying 11 critical practices spanning five foundational and six distinctive areas.
Voice without influence? Global investor voting rationale disclosures in Korea
This study examines whether global institutional investors’ voting rationale disclosures influence Korean firms’ gender diversity and climate-related policies. It finds stronger investor focus on board gender diversity than climate risk, limited influence on large firms, greater impact on smaller firms’ emissions reductions, and evidence that voting rationales affect the credibility of sustainability reporting.
Sustainable finance and corporate law: Lessons from the US
This report analyses the trajectory of sustainable finance and corporate law in the US. It focuses on the SEC's proposed climate disclosure rule and California's state-level reporting mandates, examining the political and institutional challenges these initiatives face and the implications of a federalist approach for corporate compliance.
Socially-minded investors and corporate behavior
This report examines whether socially-minded investors influence corporate behaviour through voting, managerial incentives, or identity investing. It concludes that existing channels offer limited impact and evaluates potential legal reforms, such as binding shareholder votes and mandatory disclosures, to better align corporate actions with these investors' preferences.
AI corporate governance and Ben & Jerry’s risk
This report analyses the governance structures of OpenAI, Anthropic, and Ben & Jerry’s. It examines the risks of appointing independent guardians to prioritise social missions over shareholder profits. The findings highlight how fully insulated guardians can harm investors and undermine their own missions without proper accountability mechanisms.
Optional shareholder voting
This paper examines optional shareholder voting by institutional managers (IMs) using newly available SEC data on say-on-pay votes. Only 44% of IMs vote, yet their aggregate voting footprint is twice that of mutual funds. IMs use voting as a monitoring tool, with larger positions associated with greater opposition to management.
Reining in big tech corporations: Why platform governance requires structural regulation
This paper argues that big tech platform corporations function as state-empowered artificial legal entities rather than private contractual arrangements. Highlighting their structural and governance power, the author suggests that these organisations require structural regulation and democratic oversight to recalibrate the delegated powers granted by states.
Mobilising trade associations as a force for good: A playbook for companies
This playbook outlines a five-step framework for companies to manage their indirect policy engagement through trade associations. It provides guidance on articulating science-based climate policy priorities, assessing association alignment, engaging to drive improvement, and rigorously reviewing memberships to ensure they support corporate sustainability targets.
Frontier AI auditing: Toward rigorous third-party assessment of safety and security practices at leading AI companies
This report proposes a rigorous framework for third-party auditing of frontier AI systems to verify safety and security claims. Addressing the opacity of current self-assessments, it advocates for structured AI Assurance Levels, deep access to non-public information, and continuous monitoring to enable confident deployment and standardisation across the industry.