Speaker: Virginia Harper Ho, Professor of Law at City University of Hong Kong School of Law; Co-Director, Centre for Public Affairs and Law (CPAL)

Time: 12:15-13:30 p.m., Nov 29, 2024, GMT+8

Venue: Rm 209, STL Building, PKU & Online, Zoom: 863 7770 3631, Password: 667647

Abstract: 

The severity and urgency of the climate crisis has led governments worldwide to adopt mandatory corporate reporting for climate-related risks. While standards in Europe go further and ask companies to report on their own climate impacts, all of these regimes require the largest companies to monitor and report the effects of climate risk on the company itself and to disclose greenhouse gas emissions. All of these climate disclosure mandates — even in their narrowest form — also require companies to identify and also prioritize specific stakeholder factors as a matter of corporate governance. This lecture begins by analyzing the corporate governance implications of climate-risk disclosure with reference to U.S. law, given the narrow approach of the U.S. disclosure rules and the historically strong influence of U.S. law and practice on corporate governance theory. It begins by distinguishing “thin” and “thick” conceptions of “corporate climate governance” based on emerging international climate reporting standards. It then makes the case that corporate climate governance in both “thin” and “thick” forms addresses the central criticisms of stakeholder-oriented corporate governance rules, which are grounded in agency cost and efficiency concerns. This lecture offers a foundation for future empirical research on what may soon become the “new normal” of corporate governance for firms across otherwise divergent jurisdictions.

Source: School of Transnational Law, PKU