In this speech, delivered to the Meeting of the Experts Group on Disclosure of Non-Financial Information by Companies, Dr. Steve Waygood discusses the need for greater levels, and uniformity, of discloure by companies on non-financial issues in order to better ensure long-term, sustainable, value creation for both investors and their investee companies. Dr. Waygood goes on to address four key questions regarding how and why to proceed with this aim, and sets out Aviva Investors' position.

Although still an embryonic management practice, the authors believe that “integrated reporting” of a company’s financial and non-financial performance into a single document is about to take off, as market and regulatory forces push more companies to adopt this practice. In doing so, companies will face a number of challenges, which the authors say can be efficiently dealt with via cloud computing.

I've listened carefully to the discussions of the past two days and tried to formulate these remarks as late as possible. Let me suggest four concrete action points which reflect Commissioner Andor's commitment to what he called 'a new and modern EU CSR policy framework'.

Dialogue between Anthony Alexander, writer, consultant and Director for Research for Alan Baxter & Associates engineering and planning consultancy; and David Vigar, report author.   AA: My work in the built environment sector is focussed on the practical delivery of carbon reductions. This is affected by a number of factors including: the extremely long development cycles in planning, urban design, architecture and construction, the need to transform the working practices and business models of the commercial property sector, and the institutional inertia and steep learning curve related to any change in policy.    Hence, I thought your analogy in the introduction to the Beyond Peak Carbon report that the government was like an architect and business was like a builder was rather an interesting one. 

The affordability of pensions and how they are to be funded must be looked at in the light of the nation’s long-term economic and social objectives.  In this context, the terms ‘support’ and ‘dependence’ are used and measured in an unhelpful way that incorrectly assumes a one-way relationship.  The elderly are depicted as dependent ‘takers’, but they also support the economy and society through paying taxes and voluntary activities. Instead of looking at the ‘old age support ratio’ policymakers should focus on the ‘total economic support ratio’, which relates the number of people who are working to the numbers not working.  This was 0.48 in 2003 and is projected to decline to 0.45 by 2041.  At this point it will be almost the same as it was in 1961.