“It’s about whether a company wants to help stabilize the world and prevent its chaotic drifts, or whether it wants to continue to hide behind market failures.”

IThere is now an important game between the Europeans and the Americans to find out how to define the extra-financial criteria that investors around the world will have to consider in order to distinguish “sustainable” companies from others.

The negotiations have taken a disturbing turn due to the recent positions of the president of the American organization responsible for this issue – the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), who is none other than the French Emmanuel Faber, the iconic ex-boss. of Danone and large French companies.

Mr Faber announced his reduced and limited approach to measuring the impact of companies backed by Anglo-Saxon pension funds.

The model debate

Americans and Europeans disagree about knowing whether future accounting transparency should come to clarify the direct contribution of companies, whether positive or negative, to their wider ecosystem, or whether a few indicators that indicate the extent to which social, environmental and good governance are sufficient are sufficient. The issues only affect the performance of firms.

This debate has been dubbed, in the jargon of experts, the “dual materiality debate”. Defended by the Europeans, but rejected by the Americans.

This controversy is very serious and also concerns the general public, especially savers, because it really concerns the company’s “relationship with the world”. This is a model debate, not an accounting technique. Its conclusion will lead to the ratings and ratings that make up the functioning of the stock market and the ability of states to condition their aid and taxation.

If the Americans win, we will stick to some of the indicators necessary to measure the physical toll on the environment (carbon emissions, water used, soil contaminated, waste treated, materials recycled, etc.) to evaluate the approach. respect for human capital’, or even tax and voluntary contributions imposed by the company.

Accusations of “greening”.

This, of course, makes it possible to reveal the so-called “hidden costs” of the company, which do not appear in their accounts today and actually exceed the return of shareholders. This project will have a first response to the growing accusations of regulators complaining about the general “greening” of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) criteria that the financial system has gained too empirically. years.