The month-long series of House Financial Services Committee hearings on ESG has ended. For the final day of hearings, the only witness providing testimony to the Capital Markets Subcommittee was Director of Corporation Finance Eric Gerding (who is a featured speaker in CCRcorp’s 2023 Proxy Disclosure & 20th Annual Executive Compensation Conferences). Ropes & Gray published a short summary of the hearing. Of course, the climate disclosure rule was a hearing topic although it doesn’t seem like any new ground was covered:
“In their remarks and questioning, Republicans reiterated their concerns that the SEC’s proposed climate risk disclosure rules will adversely impact capital formation and business health, including the health of small and medium-sized private companies…
On the other side of the aisle, Democrats expressed the view that enhanced climate disclosure is relevant to investment decisions since it will better enable investors to understand risk, noting that this information is being requested by a large and growing number of investors. However, one of the Subcommittee Democrats also expressed concern regarding the impact of proposed scope 3 disclosure on farmers and ranchers.”
Timing of the final release by the SEC was not discussed during this hearing. We hope news on that front will be available soon.
