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.
Team Altiorem recommends
Refine
153 results
REFINE
SHOW: 16
Time to get real: Current and future best practice for investor engagement on climate policy
This report examines how institutional investors engage on climate policy and sets out guidance for best practice. Drawing on interviews with 70+ individuals and a survey of investors representing approximately USD 33 trillion in AUM, it calls for a shift from disclosure-focused engagement towards real economy policies, and identifies three field-building priorities.
An expanding mandate: A systems-level framework for asset management
This report from the Thinking Ahead Institute and CAIA Association argues for expanding the investment mandate to incorporate systems-level thinking. Drawing on a survey of 176 asset managers and roundtables with 120 senior executives, it presents an inside-out, outside-in framework for navigating polycrisis and long-term systemic risks.
Ranking digital rights: The 2025 big tech edition
The 2025 RDR Index Big Tech Edition ranks 14 major technology companies on governance, freedom of expression, and privacy. Microsoft leads overall with 50%, followed by Alphabet at 49% and Meta at 47%. Scores are also assessed across eight thematic lenses, including algorithmic transparency, security, and targeted advertising.
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.