The corporate sector, in all humility and urgency, needs to take a good, hard look at itself, says the writer. Picture: 123RF/RAWPIXEL
For most trustees environmental, social and governance considerations have at best been either a “nice to have” or a “must have” but only from a compliance perspective, in a trustee pack. For most lay investors, it is one of those annoying topics that gets squeezed into investment conference agendas. Arguably, recent events such as those described above are changing that paradigm.
At the recent Business Against Corruption conference in Johannesburg it was pointed out that corruption does not take place in a vacuum. It cannot simply be the public sector at fault. On the other side of every deal sits a businessperson. Yet the planet protests louder, on a daily basis. Recent examples include the hottest temperatures in multiple European cities, huge degradation of the Amazon forests and the loss of critical bee populations , the loss of the enormous Okjokull glacier and many more. For many corporates these issues have a direct financial and reputational effect. On the positive side, getting one’s positioning right provides an enormous opportunity too.
Why was this article written? What created the need to spend hours crafting an article outlining the obvious that has been rehashed ad nauseum? I understand that we live in an era of high content demand but this is just ridiculous, frivolous and inane.