Investor Sustainability Engagement

Watch the videos here

Investor Sustainability Engagement

Thursday, 23 June 2022

12:00 – 19:00 CEST

Friday, 24 June 2022

08:45 – 17:00 CEST

Location

University of Amsterdam | Online

Roeterseiland campus, A building, room A2.09

Download the programme

Organisers

Anne Lafarre (Tilburg University & ACLE)
Suren Gomtsian (University of Leeds & ACLE)
Alessio M. Pacces (University of Amsterdam, ACLE & ECGI)

Supported by

University of Amsterdam - Amsterdam Center for Law & Economics and Amsterdam Centre for Transformative Private Law
University of Leeds - Centre for Business Law and Practice and Michael Beverley Innovation Fellowship Programme
Tilburg University - The Dutch Research Council (NWO)

About the Event

Recent years have witnessed a growing pressure on corporations to act more responsibly towards stakeholders other than shareholders. Demands for more responsible behaviour are coming from different sides, including from institutional investors who have become large shareholders in many corporations around the world. Powerful institutional shareholders are at the centre of private actor-led efforts to make businesses more sustainable.

Institutional shareholders, however, face many challenges in engaging with portfolio firms. Effective engagement requires a good understanding of target companies, their businesses and the relevant trade-offs, more clarity about the meaning of corporate sustainability, and the availability of credible information about business practices. Questions also remain about the incentives of institutional shareholders to drive changes in corporate behaviours and about the overall impact of investor sustainability engagement.

The conference on Investor Sustainability Engagement answered these questions by bringing together world-class scholars from law, corporate finance and economics, and leading practitioners from different sectors. This hybrid conference took place at the University of Amsterdam, in person, and virtually over Zoom on June 23-24, 2022. There were sessions with presentations of academic papers and a roundtable discussion on investor sustainability engagement by experts from the investor community, consultants, and charities.