If you happened to have read this column before, you will know that accounting is a bit of a pet subject of mine. In the context of sustainability, it makes complete sense that the environmental and social factors investors (and other stakeholders) are increasingly asking about would be reported in as standardised as possible way across industries and across jurisdictions. Here, the work of accounting standards setter IFRS’s International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) will be consequential. After its launch during COP26, work is underway to officially merge the organisations in charge of some of the most used sustainability reporting frameworks under ISSB: the Climate Disclosure Standards Board (recently incorporated) and the Value Reporting Foundation (to join by June).
So, as I caught up with the CEO of the Value Reporting Foundation recently, Janine Guillot, who is now also special adviser to ISSB chair Emmanuel Faber and an accountant by training, I was keen to ask about what these series of mergers mean for the task of making order in and sense of companies’ activities.
