Robert Eccles - Visiting Professor at Oxford University and Founding Chairman of SASB - Sustainability Accounting Standards Board

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Robert G. Eccles is a leading academic in ESG integration, focusing on sustainable corporate and investment strategies. His work focuses on how capital markets can help ensure a sustainable society for generations to come.

Dr. Eccles is a Visiting Professor of Management Practice at the Said Business School, University of Oxford. He was a Tenured Professor at Harvard Business School. Eccles has also been a Visiting Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, and a Berkeley Social Impact Fellow at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.

He was the founding chairman of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and one of the founders of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC).

He is also the first Chair of KKR’s “Sustainability Expert Advisory Council” and was an Eminent Academic Advisor to the Boston Consulting Group on Global ESG Integration and Reporting.

He is notably a prolific commentator on Forbes, having published over 150 articles. Dr. Eccles received an S.B. in Mathematics and an S.B. in Humanities and Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an A.M. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University.

Topics discussed:

• Dr. Eccles’s early intellectual evolution was from studying mathematics and humanities at MIT to doing a Ph.D. in sociology, focusing on the construction industry.

• How writing books on Transfer Pricing and Investment Banking Dealmaking earned Dr. Eccles tenureship at Harvard Business School.

• Transition from Academia to Consulting in Disclosure and Performance in the 1990s

  • 1991: The Performance Measurement Manifesto

  • 1992: Creating a Comprehensive System to Measure Performance

  • 1993: Consulting: Has the Solution Become Part of the Problem?

  • 1995: Improving the Corporate Disclosure Process

• Book Publications on Value & Integrated Reporting in the 2000s:

  • 2001: The Value Reporting Revolution: Moving beyond the earnings game

  • 2002: Building Public Trust: the Future of Corporate Reporting

  • 2010: One Report: Integrated Reporting for a Sustainable Strategy

• Founding Leadership Journey with IIRC (International Integrated Reporting Council) and SASB (Sustainability Accounting Standards Board).

  • Post-SASB Book Publication: The Integrated Reporting Movement: Meaning, Momentum, Motives, and Materiality (2014).

• Importance of Materiality:

  • Materiality in Corporate Governance: The Statement of Significant Audiences and Materiality (2016).

  • A Preliminary Analysis of SASB Reporting: Disclosure Topics, Financial Relevance, and the Financial Intensity of ESG Materiality (2020).

  • How material is a material issue? Stock returns and the financial relevance and financial intensity of ESG materiality (2020).

• Thoughts on IIRC & SASB Consolidations to ISSB-IFRS

  • A Debate At The Oxford Union: Should FASB And IASB Set Standards For Nonfinancial Information? (2018 - Forbes; SSRN). 

  • The International Sustainability Standards Board As An Ideological Rorschach Test (2021 - Forbes).

• Historical Origins of ESG and Sustainability Reporting

  • Exploring social origins in the construction of ESG measures (2018).

  • The Social Origins of ESG: An Analysis of Innovest and KLD (2020)

  • From “Who Cares Wins” To Pernicious Progressivism: 18 Years Of ESG (2022)

• Political Backlash and Regulation on ESG:

  • Some Constructive Feedback To 23 Red States On Their Anti-ESG Campaigns (August 2023).

  • A Color Spectrum Analysis Of The Redness Of 23 Red States (July 2023).

  • Written Statement for the House Financial Services Committee, June 12, 2023, Hearing entitled "Protecting Investor Interests: Examining Environmental and Social Policy in Financial Regulation."

• Anti-ESG Fund Analysis: Drilling Into DRLL’s Top 10 Holdings: A Woke Analysis (2022)

• Global SDG Funding Gap:

  • How to close the $2.5 trillion annual funding gap (Jan 2018). 

  • $2.5trn in need is not $2.5trn in opportunities (September 2023).

• Advice to Future ESG and Sustainable Finance Academics, Practitioners, Financiers, and Investors.

Note: This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered as investment advice. The interview took place on 26 September 2023.