Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance (September 18)
ESG “is not a unitary principle or even a collection of a fixed set of particular principles. Rather, ESG encapsulates the range of risks that all corporations must carefully balance, taking into account their specific circumstances, in seeking to achieve long-term, sustainable value.” The ESG label may be new, but “corporate boards and management have long considered ESG factors and risks in setting and executing strategy…. Doing so is associated with superior financial results, and consistent with long-accepted norms as to the place of business in society.”
Tags: Balance, Boards, Circumstances, Corporations, ESG, Financial results, Fixed, Management, Principle, Range, Risks, Society, Strategy, Sustainable, Value
South China Morning Post (September 13)
“Even as they struggle with one of the world’s worst Covid-19 outbreaks, nations across Southeast Asia are slowly realising that they can no longer afford the economy-crippling restrictions needed to squash it…. Regulators are pushing forward with plans to reopen, seeking to balance containing the virus with keeping people and money moving.”
Tags: Afford, Balance, COVID-19, Crippling, Economy, Outbreaks, Regulators, Reopen, Restrictions, Southeast Asia, Struggle, Virus
The Economist (August 8)
“Germany is back in its old dilemma: too weak for hegemony, too large for balance. No other country can think of imposing solutions, but Europe will not allow Germany to do so either. That may mean that the EU’s biggest challenges—from immigration to preventing a British exit and fixing the euro—will continue to go unmet.”
Tags: Balance, Brexit, Challenges, Dilemma, euro, Europe, Germany, Hegemony, Immigration, Solutions
Wall Street Journal (November 21, 2013)
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe helped his plans to achieve economic revival “by abandoning Tokyo’s 2009 pledge to reduce the country’s carbon emissions by 25% from 1990 levels by 2020.” With the reduction in nuclear power, the old targets had been looking increasingly unattainable. “Japan is not going to become the Worst Polluter in the World as a result of this announcement. Instead, it will be a country that is striking a smarter balance between the uncertainty of global-warming predictions and current economic reality.”
Tags: Balance, CO2 emissions, Economic reality, Global warming, Japan, Nuclear power, Shinzo Abe, Targets, Uncertainty
Time (September 14)
“The generation that supposedly prizes meaningful work, flexibility and balance” is already showing signs of yearning for financial success and status. Will this reshape the generation’s priorities? Millennials “may well turn out to be different from the generation that spawned them, and live more balanced lives and find spiritual happiness in the difference between having what you want and wanting what you have. But we won’t know that for many more decades.”
Tags: Balance, Financial success, Flexibility, Generation, Happiness, Meaningful work, Millennials, Priorities, Spiritual, Status