Corporate clients have been asking the G&A Institute team about recent developments at the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission, which could affect corporate ESG disclosure and reporting. With the November 2020 election of a Democrat President and Vice President, the SEC now has a 3-2 balance – three Democrat, two Republican commissioners - with a Democrat in the chair, and the Commission seems poised to take action on ESG reporting.  

• On January 21, 2021, President Biden designated Allison Herren Lee as Acting Chair of the SEC. She is a sitting commissioner with term ending in 2022, a former SEC staffer, a federal prosecutor and a private practitioner; she holds strong views on ESG reporting. 
• Lee directed the Division of Corporation Finance to “enhance its focus” on climate-related disclosures in corporate filings. “Now more than ever,” she explained, “investors are considering climate issues when making their investment decisions. It is our responsibility to ensure that they have access to material information when planning for their financial futures.”  
• Satyam Khanna was named Senior Policy Advisor for Climate and ESG.
• Lee asked SEC staff to evaluate existing disclosure rules with an eye toward facilitating the disclosure of consistent, comparable, and reliableinformation on climate change. The path forward was described this way:  SEC staff will review the extent to which public companies address the topics identified in the 2010 guidance; assess compliance with existing disclosure obligations on the issues; absorb critical lessons on how the market is managing climate-related risks.  Insights gained will be used for updating the 2010 guidance to take into account developments of the past decade. 
• Public input is being welcomed through an email box and webform (and we can expect a good volume of input from both the investment community and the corporate sector). 

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