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From Greenwashing To True Responsibility: Companies' Climate Reporting
Should companies disclose their environmental impact data on a mandatory basis? The climate crisis puts a stronger focus on the reporting obligations of companies, a topic that has previously not received much attention. In their new study, Katrin Hummel, Head of the Accounting & Reporting Group at WU Vienna, and her colleague Emira Jasari (University of Zurich) examine the consequences of mandatory climate reporting.
Did banks underreport losses and delay disclosures during the financial crisis?
Politicians, regulators, and pundits have criticized banks' financial reporting as a key culprit of the problem in the financial crisis 2008–2009 and have called for changes. But is the criticism really justified? What changes are necessary? In a recent study, Professor Christian Laux from the Institute for Finance, Banking and Insurance at WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business) and his co-authors examine the disclosure and recognition of losses of international banks during the financial crisis. The authors also investigate the consequences of a regulation that reduces the impact of losses on banks’ required regulatory capital. The evidence is important to guide standard setting and recent debates in bank regulation.
New study: Who actually reads annual reports?
The annual report is one of the most important publications of any publicly listed company. However, only very little is known about the readers of annual reports and the things they are interested in.
Stress test for investment portfolios developed
Central banks and financial regulators are increasingly aware that climate change poses a major threat to economic and financial stability. Investors and financial markets are also subject to climate-related risks. This means that climate change will have long-term effects on everyone’s prosperity: This is the conclusion reached by Senior Assistant Professor Irene Monasterol from WU’s Institute for Ecological Economics.