Climate disclosures – City watchdog toughens its stance

Herbert Smith Freehills LLP have published an article in Butterworths Journal of International Banking and Financial Law on the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)’s proposals for regulating climate-related disclosures and the litigation risks which may arise for issuers from such proposals.

Climate change has been part of the political and regulatory discourse for years. However, it is an issue which is gaining increasing prominence on the global stage. Over a thousand companies now support the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD)’s recommendations, while shareholder activism in the climate arena is stretching beyond Greenpeace’s proposed resolutions at energy companies’ AGMs. Against this backdrop, both the EU and the UK have advocated for adapting their financial systems to address climate risks. Whilst the European Central Bank and Bank of England are addressing the risks from climate change in their financial systems, attention has also turned to how companies themselves can be affected by climate change, both in terms of risk assessment and management, and in terms of investor and market-facing disclosures. The current legal framework regarding issuer disclosure already provides some requirements for issuers to disclose climate-related risks in certain circumstances. However, the existing disclosure requirements fall short when it comes to consistent and meaningful disclosures. There are therefore systemic and policy drivers to increase transparency, reporting and potential regulation in this space.

The FCA has noted that voluntary adoption of the TCFD’s recommendations has been increasing. However, based on the feedback that the FCA received in response to a 2018 Discussion Paper, the FCA considers that there is evidence to support the case for it to intervene to accelerate such progress.

In our article, we examine the existing disclosure requirements for issuers, the FCA’s new proposals for regulating climate-related disclosures, the FCA’s reasons behind the proposals, how issuers will be impacted by the proposed regulatory change, the litigation risks which may arise for issuers and how issuers can mitigate against such litigation risks.

This article first appeared in the October 2020 edition of JIBFL.

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