Environmentally friendly securities litigation?

Sustainable investments reached $35trn in 2020

Never has ESG been a hotter topic. Might shareholder litigation provide a route for savvy investors to hold issuers of securities to account on their environmental, social and governance disclosures?

While shareholder litigation and class actions are still relatively undeveloped in England and Wales compared with the US, growth is forecast, particularly in group claims. Recent years have seen large shareholder actions against Tesco and RBS concerning accounting issues and the accuracy of regulated disclosures. This bears the question will disclosures around an issuer's ESG claims fall within the securities litigation regime? As corporates increasingly seek to promote their ESG credentials, corporate disclosures have expanded to include information on ESG topics. In a small but growin...