Accounting for Sustainability Launches U.S. Chapter of Its CFO Leadership Network
18 Abril 2019 - 6:59AM
Dow Jones News
By Tatyana Shumsky
Accounting for Sustainability, a nonprofit founded by the Prince
of Wales, on Thursday launched the first U.S. chapter of its global
Chief Financial Officer Leadership Network in San Francisco.
The networking group is made up of eight founding members, all
CFOs of large U.S. companies, including Salesforce.com Inc.,
Caterpillar Inc. and Levi Strauss & Co. The group aims to help
business leaders infuse sustainability and solutions to social and
environmental challenges into core strategy and business
processes.
"This topic of sustainability is a global issue, with a global
need that's rising and the businesses that get in front of this in
addressing it proactively will not only do well, but do good," said
Salesforce CFO Mark Hawkins.
"Now is the time to go beyond conceptual understanding and shift
to taking action and specific action, which is what we're doing at
Salesforce," Mr. Hawkins said.
The founding members of the U.S. chapter of A4S's CFO Leadership
Network signed a charter that includes a commitment to take action
and use their collective influence to engage, enable and
collaborate with other CFOs and the broader business community on
tackling sustainability issues.
"If you take action in the right way, it can reduce your cost,
it can definitely future-proof your business in terms of potential
risks, which can be costly if you didn't anticipate it correctly,"
said Jessica Fries, executive chair of Accounting for
Sustainability.
The organization targeted its outreach to finance chiefs after
research showed that while many sustainability stakeholders viewed
CFOs as obstacles, they were often leaders in this area, Ms. Fries
said. "CFOs bring a huge amount of credibility," she said.
The network, which functions as a forum for CFOs to share best
practices, focuses mainly on embedding sustainability
considerations in all the decisions a company makes before
reporting its results, Ms. Fries said. These include strategic
planning, capital investment and risk management.
The networking group is the latest in a series of efforts by the
global business community to tackle concerns about climate change,
pollution and other environmental challenges. The Sustainability
Accounting Standards Board in November launched 77
industry-specific market-based standards for measuring, managing
and reporting how corporate actions affect society and the
environment.
Prince Charles helped establish Accounting for Sustainability in
2004, and the organization launched its first CFO Leadership
Network in Europe in 2013. The British royal family member long has
been an advocate of environmental and sustainability causes.
Write to Tatyana Shumsky at tatyana.shumsky@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 18, 2019 05:44 ET (09:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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