 Hello everyone. I'm Karen Cho, co-anchor of Squawkbox Europe on CNBC. Let me please extend a warm welcome to the World Economic Forum participants, stakeholders and delegates. Thank you so much for joining us for this discussion. Well, we are about to begin a conversation on a topic that is embedded in the DNA of the World Economic Forum. Stakeholder capitalism. But it is also a highly contentious one. The legitimacy of sustainability reporting has been questioned with ongoing claims about greenwashing. Can better non-financial reporting repair trust and amid fragmentation across jurisdictions? The IFRES Foundation's International Sustainability Standards Board brings promise. But what's next? Can companies forge ahead with responsible capitalism while faced with deteriorating economic conditions, divided investor bases, a highly charged political environment on the issue? Feel free to engage on social channels with this conversation. Hashtag WEF23. And for those on the audience, you could also participate using Slido. Let me introduce you to our panelists today. Erky Leichen and Chair of IFRES Foundation, United Kingdom. Brian Moynihan, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Bank of America USA, Chair of the World Economic Forum International Business Council. Geraldine Machette, Co-Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Royal DSM Netherlands. Ananish Shah, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Mahindra Group India. Welcome to you all and thank you so much for joining us today. Erky, let me turn to you first. It feels as though it's a race against time to keep stakeholder capitalism on track in 2023. How much progress has there been towards developing a global standard for non-financial reporting that gives investors, consumers, certainty that the claims they're reading from companies about social impact, sustainability, governance are more than just marketing campaigns highlighting the good, bearing the bad. But importantly, also allowing us apples for apples comparisons on company disclosures. Thank you very much. It's a very important question. Can I just first say that it actually started here three years ago. Brian was a key operator and promoter here for the demands that we must have global sustainability standards which are comparable and transparent. And then I was chairing the IFRES Foundation and we do financial reporting standards which are used in 144 countries fully or partially. But we are careful not to go to the sustainability area unless it's demand because there were so many organizations there. So we organized a consultation, global consultation, we took questions. Do we need global sustainability standards? Second, should IFRES play a role there because it's globally well known. Massive yes for the first question. Majority also is a yes to this second question. So we started preparations and second turning point was in March 2021 in Glasgow COP26 summit where we were able to make three announcements. First, we are establishing an international sustainability standards board. Where are we now? It's now established fully operational. It's now in meeting actually in Frankfurt today. Second, we need to consolidate the multiplicity of the standard setting organization in the area to avoid the alphabet soup. What has happened, we were able to consolidate major organizations such as SASP and IR which were part of value reporting foundation and CDSP on the climate in Europe so that since August they are part of IFRES as a whole. Which is a major simply case on the one hand and gives us a lot of knowledge and know how in our work. Third issue we promised in Glasgow in March 2021 that we published prototypes for two standards for general requirements and second for climate. It was done, consultation was organized this year and now the sustainability standards board is working for the final four and the aim is very concretely they would be able to publish and adopt issue the final standard by mid this year which means in June. And it's tremendous speed. I've been working with the standardization and normally two issues never meet speed and standardization. But this time because there's such an urgency we have Paris agreement. We had a lot of pressure from the markets, from NGOs. Everybody feels that we must move forward and we are doing it. I feel like we need to drumroll so there is a global standard coming in June on non-financial reporting. On two issues on general requirements which will be as I said the standard model standard and then on climate. But of course that's only standard. From that on we must move forward. It must be also endorsed and adopted and IOSCO which international organizations for securities regulators has been working very closely with us and I expect them to endorse it relatively soon. And third step is then to get assurance so that when companies are audited auditors are able to give assurance that they have been following the standards that should also follow. So many things are moving on. Finally and I finish here is that because of the global character of the issue we must be present in all jurisdictions. So our offices have been set so that we have one in Frankfurt with Europe, Montreal and the largest agreement with Beijing. And we have earlier offices which continue to work in San Francisco in Tokyo and London. So it's got a global footprint there at the moment and it's fully functioning. Thank you very much for setting the scene there Geraldine. I want to bring you in. The CEO of a European company that has been leading on sustainability impact on social governance. You're also headquartered in a jurisdiction that is demanding more paperwork from companies to avoid greenwashing concerns. What is the biggest hurdle that you think you are facing and accelerating this idea of stakeholder capitalism in 2023. I can't agree more with you. The big dilemma as you were saying earlier is speed versus standardization. So firstly I would like to applaud and thank you very much Brian for helping get speed on getting convergence. Now as Royal DSM we have been basically reporting on non-financial KPIs for 20 years plus. We're a triple P bottom line company. People plan a profit. We've put that in our incentives. It's been audited. It goes to the audit committee. It's part of the same way of communicating with our customers with our stakeholders with our employees. So this goes a long way. However, and I think it's worth reminding the audience who are listening to us why is it so important that we seek in convergence at speed. And that is because the topics that we are trying to address with this broader definition of capitalism is that a company is effectively part of the economy and of society. We are just people trying to meet the needs and demands and the activities we do have also broader implications. How do we in an efficient way make sure that we communicate on this as much as a financial part. Now you said where is the barrier. So I think the direction of travel is going well. The speed is going well. The hardest thing right now is actually finding the right pace. And it's probably the first time in my career and I've been very much an advocate for this that I worry a little bit about speed because speed without convergence is not going to work. And what we're seeing is there's a lot of work being done now very well. We have the you know the the the international sustainability standards coming. We have the European Union putting a lot of efforts. There's a lot of demand in terms of disclosures coming from there and we have the US jurisdiction. If we do not have alignment this will not actually meet the aim of what everyone is seeking which is better transparency and importantly more trust in the numbers. So for me the biggest barrier is finding that right balance between speed and convergence and the other big challenge actually having the people who can do this. So there's a huge lack of talent of qualified individuals who can join companies to help the preparers like us to provide more and more of that disclosure but also in the actually the audit firms are struggling to have enough resources. So you know I think the the ambition is definitely the right one. Finding that right pace is actually critical. Geraldine thank you. Brian you've been a leading voice in stakeholder capitalism for various different roles as chair of West International Business Council a member of the Vatican Council for Inclusive Capitalism and co-chair of the Sustainable Markets Initiative launched by Prince King Charles I should say now. Critics believe companies have been too active in controlling the narrative though with voluntary disclosures. Does stakeholder capitalism need a reboot in 2023 and would common standards achieve that. I think my two colleagues have sort of laid it out that what we saw back five years ago when we sort of started on this was as we talked about things about short termism and thinking about companies of long periods of times as we thought about 50 plus years ago when Klaus sort of wrote the manifesto in stakeholder capitalism as we thought about the companies I think 400 or so signed to support the SDGs in 2017. You started saying wait a second we've got a lot of different people defining what all this means and we've never sort of defined here's the metrics by which to measure the progress of the private sector and stakeholder capitalism and without that definition without that convergence and all the things that my colleagues talk about what you had is everybody define it their own way and somebody would think this issue is important or this way to talk about this issue and what hit me as I was sitting in Argentina at the G 20 whatever year that was and I'm sitting there on a panel and I look out at the audience and everybody there want to tell me different ways to calculate the same question. I said this this has got to do it and I looked and there were 600 conferences on metrics on sustainability scheduled in 2020 in North America alone and I said we've got a business has got to take a leadership position here so we we went and said to the big four accounting firms go out and look at all the metrics including GR and SAS being all the people get them in a room put them in a room work with those colleagues and try to come up with a set of metrics that master SDGs that simply says capitalism is aligned to producing what the world wants from us simply says company X Y or Z across all industries and all types of companies is aligned with driving that and we'll tell you how they're doing it and then the last part is critical put it in your annual report so now we have 200 companies around numbers are doing this 50 odd or under third year this year another 60 70 or under second year this year and another 80 or so come on stream and these are all industries across all the world so what you can say people can say is now it's in your end report Sarbanes oxy in the US context is going into it it's accountable it's disclosed or tell people why you can't disclose this they cover all the metrics there's 20 out of them and then we started saying okay now we got to go to the official side and try to get them to adopt it and that's where Hurricane colleagues and we said you know we don't want this to be unofficial we want to be official so then we can say stop the unofficial level of it and we all agree and then frankly an investment manager a consumer society others can sit there and say here's a line which is acceptable in Europe either above or to blow if you blow we shouldn't do business with you if you're above it tells how you're making progress along these important things which in any day will line capitalism what society wants from it and then we'll get us going faster Brian thank you Nisha I want to turn to your important voice too because emerging markets need to be developed for the future of capitalism and the future of capitalism. I know that India it's been late to the party but it is now driving forward too in trying to achieve responsible capitalism for instance the securities regulator has made a mandatory for top 100 1000 listed companies to reveal sustainability information and the country has a specific CSR mandate to spend 2% of profits on CSR initiatives. And this is one as well where the momentum we are seeing right now will allow India to leapfrog again our Prime Minister has put out a very high bar to get 250% renewable energy by 2030. As we think about energy transition that is a huge step forward. Solar energy in India today is cheaper than coal it's at 2.7 cents per kilowatt hour. We have a solar business as part of our group and the kind we are seeing in solar is just amazing. So I do feel that India will end up leapfrogging but I go back to the conversation here which is critical around having the metrics and again I would comment Brian for his work with the IBC. We are one of the 200 companies that are reporting it's audited it's an annual report but I'd go beyond that which is what are the actions now that we are driving. We often talk about goals for 2040 and 2050. We want to start talking about goals for 24 and 25 and really start driving those actions so we've got the reporting and measurement behind us. We've really got to start focusing on the action now. Let's go back to the standards then Anarchy. So we have a business in India. We got to be careful about CSR in the 2% spending which is a great policy for that country and we do it just like others away from that alignment of enterprise and that changes this dynamic dramatic. Would you rather have 2% of our profits in India or would you rather have our entire $60 billion cost base aligned or $3 trillion balance sheet aligned or $3 or $4 trillion in assets that we hold for our customers. That's the distinction we're making in this is aligning the entire enterprise which will create a lot more action how we purchase, how we consume energy, how we hire people, how we spend money, how we spend money, how we spend money, how we spend money in the corporate governance. That's 70s and 80s honestly. We are now in a different world which is you have to align the entire system to get the progress society wants. I would agree completely with Brian because this has to be driven from within. It is not a mandate saying you got to spend money. We started sustainability journey in 2008. We have had India's first carbon neutral plant. We are looking at in fact we have set up India's first residential net zero community. There are a number of actions around greening ourselves, decarbonising industries, nurturing the planet but all of that happens only when exactly as Brian said everyone is aligned within the company and we want to do it together. We have more than 140 countries that follow global accounting rules so we can compare profits mostly across the globe but even with a common standard how hard will it be to get buy in because of all the different voluntary mandatory rules we have got at this point? Perhaps we must remember that the priorities agreement has brought support politically. Then the finance stability board which was shared by the United Nations which have also been broadly accepted and their structure is in our standards and now the consultation on the content has been also broadly agreed because it is based on this long work. So I am relatively optimistic that we can accept this kind of global baseline everywhere and why it is important even though of course everything is important but investors need to understand that if there is no global baseline you are not able to compare investment. Then there are jurisdictions who want to go higher as was said here but it is very important that they are somehow clear they are complementary that this global baseline applies for all and we are working very hard for that in good cooperation also with jurisdictions. There is a particular jurisdiction working group where we have for instance that global baseline for all and additional element one day so won't clearly separate. One of the problems is supply chain and a lot of companies are revisiting that value chain. How do you bring small and medium sized enterprises into a global standard? If I just make briefly that it is very important because if it is complicated or you need more auditors or account understand work at the company it will never work. It must be as simple as possible standardized and also done in the way that you can use also estimates. But we are very much focusing on the issue that it must be simple formulas so that whole supply can apply the same disclosure requirements. But that is why you had to go away from informal standard settings and other things too to make it part of the official sort of accounting practice in a broadest context because once you do that then everybody will stop with listed companies. You are only going to talk about companies. If you stop with large listed companies you are only going to talk about certain companies. What can happen is you can have squeezing out of things that may want to go on by other companies in the claims of wait this is an unlevel playing field or there is greenwashing. People are just divesting polluting assets and nothing is being done to reduce emissions which is a whole game. I am looking at Al Gore there and he will tell us at some point that when you ease out of the system you can do that. All these informal standards when all these groups you see this alphabet soup is they come to big companies they are not talking to the supply chain down the stream so net zero commitment by a big company will drive the supply chain but if they don't have to disclose it they can hide for a while whether private equity firms can take those out of the public domain and this doesn't let you do that but if you want to support and help develop this have we tried to educate clients they tried to educate the clients that said if it goes through the process which it is going through it becomes part of the official literature as opposed to someone's idea that they can go around and do share of resolutions for large companies and try to create action it's a completely different question. I would love to also here bring the voice of the customer and the consumer because what has changed fundamentally from the assumption and to choices and what we are trying to do is clearly I have been interfacing with the capital market my whole career so I understand capital allocation and comparability but what is very important is we have more and more of our customers we are saying we need to be able to tell our consumers what is the climate footprint of this product and that means that you embedding it in your absolute operations and that requires the whole supply chain to be there so scope three is the biggest thing we need to figure out. Scope one and two is within your own remit you can measure it yes the standards need to be the same etc but what is I think in many ways very encouraging is that the debate about disclosures and methodologies is going well beyond annual reports integrated reports and capital allocation it's in the core of what companies are doing today and that makes it to some extent even more important that we get it right. Are those small and medium sized companies that you work with in India capable of adopting a global standard this year? Some of them are but that's where we need to help them and as large companies many of us who've been at the forefront of this have learned a lot over the last 10-15 years that we've been doing this and one of the discussions we had at the IBC yesterday was how do we distill that together and how do we take that to small and medium enterprises specifically for India we have an alliance of India CEOs for climate change and I'm co-chairing that we had a session yesterday and we were talking about bringing the industry associations in India together going to the medium and small enterprises and helping them through our journey to say here are things that work here are things that had a six month payback period and we've done 2,000 projects so we know which ones can payback very quickly and which ones will take a little longer and it's an economic argument as well I would agree with Geraldine which is first the consumer wants it second there is an economic argument and third if we can create a blueprint that makes it easy for folks to do it that's really the path to go forward Brian I want to get a little bit picky around the standards here because we know there's certainly going to be a number of critics where anarchy fleshes out this global standard if we think about accounting standards the US uses gap not if it's for accounting standards so rules based system versus as principles based system so without getting too technical here we're not going to have any identical accounting standards why should we hold out any hope that the US too will be part of a global system on non-financial reporting you know the difference between gap and international account there are differences but it's it's the frosting on the layer of the cake some of it is standard and by the way they're understood the differences and so therefore people can articulate and see them and that's history and how we got here on non-financial reporting but the thing is when you get to actually some of this not all of it but some of this may be easier to actually go across jurisdiction because the discussion about you know companies energy usage and the emissions part of that and things like that there are factors and formulas and calculations that are already being used across jurisdiction so I call me optimistic I don't think this is as hard as you know accounting for inventory or something like that trying to get that straight across 150 countries I think this is probably easier because it was developed as a global standard because this is a global question from the start I think you are right and even I must say when you go up the US gap and IFRS in the end the difference are not big ones and we work together to avoid any disruption but here I think the critical question really is that we have one global which we apply in the same way otherwise it doesn't serve capital markets it doesn't serve consumers and that's important that Asia is here with us I just say and Africa I've been very much encouraged that African by the way ministers of finance ministers in environment came out to say that we want to be among the first who adopt these global standards of course for political reasons but also reason they want to be part of the supply chain simple clear global best solution the second issue will then be will they be mandatory or voluntary in the countries but if we have the same assurance for companies difference is not perhaps that big some areas may be difficult just to make it mandatory others make it simpler but Brian is better expert on that actually one thing remember one of the problems going on in the US is it's not going through the accounting side it's actually going through the scourge disclosure side it applies to a very narrow set of the market I mean much as everybody thinks it applies to big set every non-public company has nothing to do with this and so that's the danger of going through the Securities Exchange Commission equivalent as opposed to getting a part that then stops the leakage especially around the environment that stops the ability to take something out of the public domain and hide it and so I think that's where we're trying to get to standardization at the core disclosure accounting in a report put it in your in a report get the out of processes on top of that and that Erky's earlier point requires it to be somewhat straightforward at the beginning it's never simple otherwise you have the problem we're not going to have enough people to do it and the arguments get about this as hard and you're going to start to lose enthusiasm for it can I just bring up leadership here because this whole concept of divulging information on sustainability and 360 on risk that is just not encapsulated in financial reporting yet the most prominent central banker in the world recently on a panel, Jerome Powell over at the Fed said last week in Stockholm that the Federal Reserve will not become a climate policymaker isn't that exactly what Jay Powell should be doing? I was actually in Stockholm I know Jay well but I just wanted to make the difference he said that he's not a policymaker the Federal Reserve is not a policymaker on the other hand financial stability belongs to the central banks so disclosure of the risks is critical also for central banks but you should separate these two issues and when we talk about disclosure it's critical to be able to make the assessment of the risks which bank and the economy are facing Brian we know it's a very meanwhile just so you know if you read the papers today they're starting their process on risk assessment in climate and the big banks he's making a distinction which is policy versus supervisory and analysis of the actual risk involved what he's saying is I'm not the policymaker which industries and that's somebody else but they are looking at literally we're going through the exercise beginning as we speak. Does this go to the heart of the backdrop in the United States that everyone's dancing around the politics now that's being pushed back from some U.S. Republicans where the companies should even be in the business of stakeholder capitalism they should be purely focused on profits and we're coming up to a 2024 presidential election campaign could the politics derail the conversation we're having here because our companies have been around for almost 240 years so we were there in the election where they actually really had a tough election in 1800 the plays are made about so go see Hamilton you'll see when people shout each other after elections and vice president brought up his trees these institutions these great institutions we all sit on and we'll be here through governments and changes so the idea is you have to have something that works for society and so the politics are up and flow and there'll be a lot of debate about it but I think if you talk to business people investors and others in the United States they're going to run the companies based on a view of how to create long term value and I don't think that gets derailed by politics. I don't think it's going to be because as we talk about Europe it's a different environment here regulators mostly on the same page central banks want to get involved too when it comes to stakeholder capitalism but the problem is the investor base Dunon a very big company in Europe you had activists trying to remove the CEO in recent years because they thought he was too committed to some of these issues fast forward and now you've got concerns that you've got legal cases coming that activists are concerned the company hasn't been too active enough on some issues around plastics you've got very divided communities how do you deal with that very split opinion from what investors want from you? Ultimately you have to go back to the essential of who you are as a company and do what's good for your company and for your employees and your customers and society at large and you're going to have cases where sometimes it's seen as too much of not enough but what you were saying very earlier there's ebbs and flows and it's all about resilience it's about how do you as a company and as a society manage to shocks and we've been focusing a lot on this panel on climate standards because that's the one that is now but what is important this is in the context of broader non-financial reporting and the broader part is the social part is the interactions between the economy and the social dynamics so this is something we have to be careful of because I'm a little less positive on the convergence I'm very positive on I think we'll get convergence quite rapidly on climate because of the work done on TCFD etc I'm not so sure we're going to get convergence on the broader non-financial and to your point of Europe maybe versus the US there's a big debate about single materiality versus double materiality that is a core fundamental principle that if we can't agree on we're going to have issues especially if you are multinational that works across jurisdictions and when you have those fundamental differences then it does become more complicated with the investor base because you're playing on different kinds of rules and expectations as to the emphasis that needs to be put not only on environmental but on social aspects of the impact of a company Anisha I'm curious to hear your view on this as you listen to the conversation around how central banks deal with the issue and the split investor bases politics rising around some of the capitalist themes how does India deal with these competing themes as it tries to play catch up I think let's go back to the fundamentals this is not about politics this is about society and for society capitalism is a word that often has been derided so we have to look at how do we reinvent capitalism and really bring back the positives of capitalism in terms of helping society our philosophy is what we call rise which is enabling communities to rise or driving positive change in lives of communities we have been very clear that we are purpose driven purpose comes first, profits follow and that's something we've told our investors for many years we are the best performing stock in the Nifty for the last 20 years and therefore our investors like the fact that we are purpose driven yes obviously they want to see profits as well but purpose will always come first so I don't think there's a choice in that factor so while there will be noise around it I think if companies take true to their course consumers will see that we talked about trust and transparency earlier that's a very important element for companies to succeed and with that investors, politicians all I think will follow the same field I think in a strong economic environment it's easy for companies to say that purpose comes first but what about a very difficult economic environment now that we're setting up for that companies are worried about profits they're worried about margins for the first time in a number of years we're coming off the back of what have been extraordinary conditions for company profits how do we think about things like human capital a commitment to bringing social impact when quite frankly companies are laying off workers how do we stay on track on some of these issues I think we call it the genius the end it's profits and purpose that's not a concept that we invented it's a great business writer Jim Collins in the mid 90's talked about the sustainability of companies all the companies studied and how the great fail all the different books he's written that was one of the key principles so I think it's always going to have an flow and be in balance but in tough times after the financial crisis we still drove the company down both avenues and so wouldn't you think about adjustments and headcount our job is to manage it without having human you can reduce jobs without actually having human impact by letting attrition be your friend and managing through that stuff in it so that's why we plan a headcount by months three years in advance to sit there and say how do we manage and how do we retrain people and how do we bring people across Brian but that's your company you've just come off the back of a very strong reporting season not every company is in the same position I think we have the luxury that we're more diverse we move people around and stuff but I think the managers I talked to think hard about this disrupting somebody's life is one of the most difficult things that you can do as a manager and so I think all of us try to figure out a way around it but be that as it may you go to the other side and this goes out to a little bit Jeremy's point the metrics we had are balanced across different dimensions they go against all the SDGs they go against people purpose and planet and so they get into international tax stuff they get into diversity disclosure they get into other aspects of the company's operations not just environmental we all talk about environmental because it's so critically important but the reality is it goes across this balanced view which ought to really be a measurement across time of all your constituencies that's an important aspect of this and so I think we got to make sure that we don't just do the environmental stop you want to go across these things which the human capital question becomes that turnover rates, diversity fair treatment supply chain things like that that are critically important here Yes actually the work program is such that this year we should get done this general requirements standard and from that on there would be agenda consultation on four issues first would be biodiversity second human capital third human rights and fourth connectivity with financial reporting and this would be consulted globally and openly so we are moving on but I just think that for the credibility of the exercise this climate standard is critical there's such a support behind if it speaks to the fellow of the time they will get it done credibility for the other exercises will also be weak second point on the short termism and of course I mean in politics and business there are people who only work on short term they don't live long You've come from a world of of central banking hierarchy you've seen rational decisions you think about not just from the human capital point of view around climate change that some companies may not want to take a long term target 2030, 20, 40, 20, 50 they don't have to commit the investment in the next 24 months they can change the time frame of course the atmosphere is difficult let's say in Europe we have when Ukraine has a lot of disruptions and surprises but still I if I make one comment on Europe I must respect European political leadership in European Union you saw yesterday on the lion here you have seen many prime ministers they have been working for the long term they don't give in they have been united I think this same attitude works with the green deal works with the global sustainability standards they have been setbacks but keep the long term in your mind you can adjust but don't change the course direction travel must be clear and what I have seen now leaders you'll see many others is perhaps stronger common position we have seen for a long time in Europe Jordan I'm interested to hear your views as to whether you think there will be slippage on some of the goals that you have given the tough macroeconomic environment do you think some companies will pull back on these targets around social around climate target investments in particular well maybe just if you allow me to bounce back on the long term targets versus the short term and that's probably where the biggest credibility gap or potential gap comes from targets to 2030-50 but you the person won't necessarily be in the job anymore and one way of addressing that is to actually combine these externally committed targets midterm with internal targets that are actually preferably linked to incentives and those are either annual bonus or long term incentives long term being usually three years LTI type of structures and then you have basically you're embedding the micro steps in the context of a committed long term direction and why is that helpful and that's our genuine experience is that you have to take into account the context we're currently in a very difficult economic environment in Europe of course we have the impact of Ukraine and things like that so you can adjust in your short term planning you have all of those little bumpiness that comes along but it is anchored in a long term direction which by the way governance then kicks in with the board making sure that you you are constantly driving those road maps so I would say that is how in practice companies do this it's externally it looks like a long term ambition but internally you set your road maps and you set your hurdles and you take it forward what we're going to see in 2023 is exactly that is the environment an easy one to navigate absolutely not but when you know what your mid to long term ambition is and you're setting every year it's like you're rolling four cars you say okay we have different facts we adjust to them but we know what the goal is and when you are in the space where you are able to as a corporation to do this you attract the right kind of people who are going to make it happen as well Anish let me toss it down to you as we talk about just navigating this tightrope of the macroeconomic headwinds this year do you think that some companies will just take a shortcut and pull back from some of the targets we're talking about So Karen purpose is more important in tough times when times are good it's easy to do everything else so the true test is if you're building long term trust then can you stand up and live your purpose in tough times as well and I do see us and a number of companies around us actually being able to do that because this is not about 2040 and 2050 I agree with Geraldine which is it's easy to set those targets here at someone else's problem at that point but we have to set targets for 24 and 25 and 26 and those are the targets that we have to drive there's two things that one is this this annualized disclosure has to show year by year progress and so having now done this a couple years and having talked to people come and say we'd like to know how you're doing diversity so we'll go to page 53 or whatever it is the annual report you can see so it now binds the company because next year it's got to drop in if it disappeared it'd be really strange so there's scope one scope two scope three the controllable and then moving out what you're doing you pick the topic so one is by having it disclosed on a periodic basis you're actually making part of the official record so to speak you can't walk away from it and second is the facts don't bear out 20 and 21 and 22 were three interesting years and the reality is I think in 21 we did $200 billion of financing around the SDGs about three quarters of that was environmental and in 22 we haven't told it all up yet but it's going to be bigger and so while the world's been going the commitments are net zero by operating companies and colleges and everybody 8,000 organizations of I remember Nigel's numbers right it creates this level of activity that just is growing very fast that's not going to stop because those projects are committed to going on 20 branches solar on top of the US we have 60 this year these things are relentless in the thing could you slow them down sure but they won't stop and so our client demand is driving this and you see it keep going up so obviously it hasn't been stopped in very tough times the world in the last couple years of war the pandemic shutting down the economy the interest rate movements down and up you know you pick your spot any uncertainty around that and yet the amount of financing going towards these things has gone up each year we've got a couple minutes left a very quick comment from each of you on a concrete step that CEOs leaders of companies institutions can take this year something that perhaps can be replicated to make genuine progress in 2023 Nish do you want to kick it off for us I would start with decarbonizing our industries that's one where we've got to take the leadership and it's possible and what we're seeing also is consumers actually wanted I talked about our residential net zero project it sold out in three days we haven't seen that with any of our other projects the consumers want to come in and align themselves with green and that's a momentum shift that we are seeing which is very significant so in terms of concrete concrete steps we have to focus on decarbonizing our industries look at circularity wherever possible and work with not only our suppliers but also everyone else in the industry to be able to have that path to be able to share what works this is innovation but it's not innovation for a specific company it has to be done collaboratively okay do you want to weigh in here perhaps I take a one step forward Jean-Paul Serrevé who is the chair of the IOSCO which is the International Organization of Securities Regulators he said that the aim should be that 2024 financial reporting and sustainable reporting will go together that's a good point to keep in mind if you are a business leader be ready to rebuild both 2024 the questions cannot be any more delicate to sustain the director they will come to CEO if you take that as a target move forward when standards are there start to apply be ready Geraldine what concrete steps can other CEOs take this year for me in the context of the conversation we're having on this panel is absolutely being gate right here right now on making real the convergence of these standards that are coming because if we're not avoid we cannot complain later if we don't like the way that things have fallen so this alignment particularly I have to say a bit self-interested between Europe and the US because this is starting it will be the bedrock from which the international baseline is going to be based we need to be all at the table in order not to slow things down but to make sure that the quality of what comes at the end has built the trust 2023 is the year Brian two parts to one is and I said it to the IBC members we've got 200 companies if you're not one of them why aren't you joining because you're going to be a competitor look like one of those companies so get the disclosure done because frankly you said it's true it's coming at you anyways you might as well get going and that's sort of a concrete step a CEO can drive in a company the second thing as a financial services company as a bank the thing we're doing a lot of especially in the supply chain question we've had 12,000 meetings with customers so far small minimum size explain what a net zero commitment by their ultimate buyer of their product means and that education process is helping them get prepared for what's going to come down the pike at them at some point maybe not yet and to me that's a very concrete step because in a day the belief that the financial system is going to drive this is dead flat wrong it has to be the actual operating companies and then we'll help that finance that transition one of the things you have to do is educate the people who don't have the hundreds of people we have work on that stuff about what is going to mean to them and as you do that you're going to start the momentum for another round of activity and that's a concrete step what's going on as we speak there's been plenty I think of topic ideas we've covered here in stakeholder capitalism from the convergence that needs to take place across jurisdictions the common standard that is coming and how you prepare for that from everything from a small and medium size enterprise an emerging developing market to a very large multinational globally thank you very much for tackling the issues that challenges and of course one of the big ones and the backdrop for many people here on the mountain is that macroeconomic and how you stay on track with many of those long term targets very much appreciate the time here on stage thank you very much to Geraldine to Brian to Adish and also to Erky we do appreciate your time