JPMorgan is to investigate clients and staff over illegally obtained federal aid. The bank has nearly arranged $29bn of forgivable loans under the PPP, a business loan initiative established as part of the US $2.2tn economic stimulus package. It is difficult to believe that this happened...
The modern slavery case at Boohoo shows the importance of investigating firms' ESG practices more deeply. The Manchester-based online fast-fashion retailer Boohoo has launched an independent review of its domestic supply chain after the Sunday Times published an investigation affirming that workers manufacturing its products at a...
After the fraud scheme, Wirecard’s links to the Italian Mafia have also been discovered. The firm processed payments for Maltese gambling companies that laundered money for the Ndrangheta. A good ESG analysis would have been effective in detecting Wirecard's controversies. The German payment service provider Wirecard, which went bankrupt...
Despite the worldwide increase in ESG and sustainable investments, in the USA we are assisting to a great deterrence against ESG policies reviving the old objection they provide low returns, which has not been supported by the facts. In the last decade, a fundamental shift towards sustainable...
Suppliers of international tech and fashion companies, such as Apple, Nike and Calvin Klein, have been exploiting forced labor from ethnic minority groups, mostly Uighurs, detained in the Xinjiang region, China. Organizations have already started to take action. Several investigations carried out in the last year by The...
Ms. Booker, former Global Head of Diversity at Morgan Stanley, has pursued legal action against the bank claiming that she was fired last December after having pushed a plan aimed at helping black financial advisors. Last June, Marilyn Booker has pursued legal action against Morgan Stanley for...
The interconnection between sound and the criminal economy is growing. We believe that a sound ESG Due Diligence can avoid it. This is why at SVI we offer our services to prevent reputational risks to investors and support a sound economy. According to an article published...
Wirecard’s share price has collapsed after the exposure of its fraud scheme. On Thursday, June 18th 2020, Wirecard’s auditor, EY, stated that, when carrying out its 2019 audit of the firm, it could not find $2 billion in the company’s accounts, funds that the German firm later...
Adidas has received complaints from employees about the lack of diversity in the workplace for years. The recent resignation of the company Global HR chief follows employees’ criticism about her approach to addressing racial diversity issues and is among the highest-profile executive changes that happened after...
In 2018, the Danish bank, Danske Bank was accused of suffering a “near-total process failure” in a whistleblower report, which reveals that up to USD 3.3 billion linked to the President and the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation had been laundered through its...
As announced under the bold European Green Deal, the European Commission has launched a public consultation on the review of the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD). The NFRD sets out the rules for disclosing non-financial information by large companies as required by the Directive 2014/95/EU. The...
Evidence demonstrates that investors' behaviours change when the largest proxy advisory firm downgrades public companies' rating on governance ground. Professor Paul M. Guest and PhD student Marco Nerino of King's Business School at King's College London empirically demonstrate that Institutional Shareholder Services' (ISS) announcement of corporate...
Next year at Apple’ s annual meeting, shareholders will vote a non-binding resolution for transparency over human rights policies. On 9 September 2019, SumOfUs, a consumer advocacy group, submitted the proposal claiming that the US tech company had limited individual freedom of expression kowtowing to China's will, which...
In November 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) voted a controversial proposal for more stringent scrutiny of proxy advisers, companies which support investors managing their votes at corporate meetings. The US financial regulator required proxy adviser to let listed companies’ management review proxy advisers’ recommendation before it...