Question

This assignment provides an opportunity to get some hands-on experience exploring sustainable finance, on balancing of shareholders and stakeholders value of companies. In fulfillment of the sixth course learning objective “Explore the role of financial management in promoting sustainable business practices and development (Overall grade)”. The main objective of this assignment is to equip students with the necessary theoretical and practical tools used in business and financial sustainable analysis and integrated reporting.

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The assignment should include an abstract, introduction, conceptual building of sustainable financial management and sustainable financial growth, results and discussions sections, the project should also include conclusion section.

1. Examining the existing various corporate sustainable reporting disclosure and how they contributes to shared value creation and firms value.

2. Improving financial decision making by linking sustainability issues to financial decisions and key value drivers, such as capital budgeting, the cost of capital, profitability, working capital management and investment returns.

3. How to evaluate corporate sustainability risks and opportunities from a financial perspective, and understand how to manage/mitigate risks.

4. Understanding the interactions between sustainability practices and sustainable financial growth

5. Analyzing different financial systems such as western financing model and Islamic financing in the area sustainability.

6. Analyzing and prediction of corporate bankruptcy and sustainable growth.

Answer 1

1. With the help of the below example we will be able to clear the corporate sustainability.

Example : The research was designed to evaluate the determinants of corporate sustainability disclosure practices for 85 Japanese companies listed on Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) in the First Section, from 2008 to 2014. The study examined disclosure information from CSR and annual—integrated reports and corporate websites. The study’s objective is to measure corporate sustainability disclosure guidelines determination (CSDF rate) and the relationship between CSDF rate and corporate sustainability performance. The content analysis and regression analysis were conducted to examine the research objective. The results of content analysis indicate that listed firms on TSE disclose some extent on environmental, social and economic information but the level of disclosure is vary; CSDF indicator with maximum disclosure level attributed to “Total amount of greenhouse emissions” with 99% disclosing rate and the minimum is the “Index and Grades” with 0%. Moreover, the study finds mixed results conforming to correlation and regression analysis. Similar to some existing studies, sustainability disclosure level and sustainability performance indicators have no strong association. Because there is a weak positive significant linkage among CSDF rate and water consumption, firm’s size, and environmental conservation effort. Nevertheless, to be consistent with social values, ensuing the guidelines and the accuracy of the disclosure information are important for corporate sustainability reporting.

Also above all the corporate sustainability disclosure will help to improve the value of the share value of the company as well the firms value.

2. key value drivers, such as capital budgeting, the cost of capital, profitability, working capital management and investment returns.play an important role in the sustainability of the company as below.

capital budgeting : it will help to forcast the amount of capital required v/s cost for the capital in the firm. profitability, : It helps to decide the amount of profit will the firm will be able to reap from the business as per the targets in the short and long term.

working capital management : It involve how is the Current assets and the Current liability are been managed it is of great important for an company in the short and long term.

investment returns. : It is of great importance specifically for an company in which investment is the prime source of income and for the other companies to the extent of the investments are made.

3. Sustainability risk refers to the uncertainty in being able to sustain the growth of a given system (a corporation, household, community or economy) because certain practices may have negative externalities which result in the dilapidation of value chain of the system over a period of time or impact other related systems

Sustainability risk assessment techniques and methodologies are being designed and used by companies at an ever increasing rate. It should help them quantify the risk so that a clear picture of expected impact of climate change and unsustainable practices emerge. Given the rapid fluctuation in domestic and global scenarios, risk assessment can help gauge the degree of impact in different scenarios across a short, mid, and long term.

How to mitigate sustainability risk :

Over the last several years, sustainability programs have emerged from organizations’ increased focus on compliance and communication to stakeholders. More recently, companies are realizing that management of environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues can have a positive impact on their core businesses, with improvements to cost of capital, profitability and supply chain risk issues. “The key to producing bottom-line improvement is to align ESG efforts with corporate finance and risk management strategies. That kind of integrated approach often has a positive effect on corporate performance,

4.

Purpose

– Over recent years, a number of companies have committed to sharing information relating to their environmental, social and governance (ESG) activities, in response to a higher demand for transparency from stakeholders. This paper aims to explore the impact of such reporting on the financial performance of construction companies.

Design/methodology/approach

– This paper first examines the state of non‐financial reporting of publicly‐listed construction companies on climate change, environmental management, environmental efficiency, health and safety, human capital, conduct, stakeholder engagement, governance and other matters deemed to be of concern to institutional investors. It then presents the results of an empirical study on the impact of issuing non‐financial reports and the extent of companies’ sustainability practices (represented by ESG scores) on the financial performance of the companies. Financial performance is measured via a range of financial ratios.

Findings

– The paper finds that a majority of the publicly‐listed construction companies studied have low levels of reporting, while construction companies issuing non‐financial reports largely outperform those which do not in a number of selected financial ratios, although the correlation between financial performance and ESG scores is not strong.