ESG disclosure and emerging trends in responsible investments: how asymmetric information may impact stability again

Abstract

Environmental and social sustainability together with sound governance have increasingly attracted interest from consumers and investors, paving the way for the so called ESG finance. ESG criteria seem to reshape the way companies, investors and consumers behave. While laudable, the acceleration of ESG finance may raise concerns relating to the robustness underpinning this new set of financial products, as well as the reliability of ESG-related information released by companies to design their public profile. A new breed of ESG ratings and rankings is enriching the metrics used by investors and consumers to make informed financial and investment decisions. Nevertheless, such ratings and rankings depend on the individual disclosure strategies adopted by companies. The scope of this article is to complement available data about individual emissions declared by companies with their ESG disclosure level, particularly focusing on the Environment. This leads the authors to build a new metric, deputed to reduce asymmetric information hopefully, and to favour responsible investment. Starting from ESG related information publicly available, a new disclosure adjusted pollution index (namely the “GHG Scope-1 DAdj index”) is built. The empirical analysis performed in the second part of the contribution, based on this new index, suggests that the rush to ESG finance may possibly be generating leeway for new forms of asymmetries and potential distortions in investment decisions as well as providing ground for speculative approaches in financial product development that heighten concerns and new risks for investors. A handful of companies from our sample become less obvious choices for responsible investors once their environmental record is assessed through the GHG Scope-1 DAdj index.