The 2022 EY Tax and Finance Operations Survey queried 1,650 executives in more than 40 jurisdictions and a dozen industries in order to see how companies are doing in post-COVID era.
Businesses have been dealing with lots of different pressures for many years before COVID-19 and those pressures got fueled even more by COVID-19 pandemic:
• Businesses had to change supply chain;
• fine-tune business for global tax reform
• adjust to thousands of law changes during the pandemic;
• shift workforce dynamics to provide personal safety
Carmine Di Sibio, EY Global Chairman and CEO explains the situation: "Even before COVID-19, businesses knew they needed to change the way they operated to succeed in a rapidly evolving environment. The pandemic brought new urgency to making change while underscoring the need for any transformation to put them on a path to build long-term value for all stakeholders."
The Tax and Finance Operations Survey clearly supports this saying. Please see the chart below.
The pace of change in corporate reporting is accelerating fast, putting significant pressure on those responsible for its preparation. In this post-COVID-19 pandemic world, as we confront major societal challenges such as climate change, it is important that the approach to communicating a company’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance should evolve quickly to earn the trust of stakeholders. Investors and other stakeholders are seeking consistent and credible ESG disclosures on the material issues that help them understand how a company performs, makes decisions and creates long-term value and sustainable growth.
There is a gap between how useful companies believe their ESG reporting should be and the views of investors who use it in their decision-making. Please see the chart below.
Closing this gap could be difficult, and finance leaders should seek to have a strong grasp of exactly what information investors find useful and how it can impact their decision-making, though this can be challenging, as different investors have their own views and requirements.
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