After an opening speech from Entain CEO Jette Nygaard-Andersen, the first panel commenced with a conversation covering ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) in relation to betting and gaming companies, and why they are important for the industry.
The panel was moderated by Jay Dossetter of Entain and comprised of Geert Arlman, Commercial Head, S&P Global, Tiphaine Aires, Consultant, Carbon Trust, and Trisha Taneja, Head of Sustainable Finance, Deutsche Bank.
“ESG matters tremendously within a credit rating,” said Arlman. “We speak to credit investors on a daily basis, with about 20 thousand investment meetings per annum and the question is ‘what are we doing to incorporate ESG within the credit rating?’
“Over the last five years, the ESG considerations used to be the domain of specialised ESG funds; they are still in these specialised ESG funds but they have grown tenfold. But in any investment decision, ESG is a factor. The way we help with our credit ratings is by making it very clear what ESG factors cause an upgrade, downgrade, or no change at all."
When asked if corporate companies have approached Carbon Trust with more pressure on investors to target areas of ESG, Aires explained the TCFD (Taskforce on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures) as "the guidelines that allow companies to be able to identify risks and opportunities they have, quantify them and decipher the cost of addressing such risks now, and what might be the cost in the future."
“Increasingly the uncertainty of how those risks will affect businesses in the future is forcing a lot of companies to look at them,” she added.
As regulation is coming into play, and TCFD is becoming a mandatory requirement in countries like France and soon-to-be the UK, the question emerges on how companies are impacted by the change in climate, and how to properly factor that into their investment decisions.
Taneja explained: “There has been a new announcement recently, whereby all major listed UK companies will now be regulated to disclose their transition plans and how they are going to achieve it.”
