Christina Thomas, partner at Mayer Brown, participated in a video interview in conjunction with REITwise 2022: Nareit's Law, Accounting & Finance Conference.
Thomas provided a state of play regarding the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) proposed ESG regulatory changes and what has been behind the impetus for more robust disclosures.
In the last year, Thomas said, the SEC has discussed updating human capital management disclosure rules, in addition to new rules on diversity and climate change. In fact, on March 21 the SEC proposed rule changes that would require registrants to include certain climate-related disclosures in their registration statements.
Thomas noted that since the SEC’s original human capital disclosure rules came out, there has been “varied disclosure, not only company to company but industry to industry.”
Meanwhile, Thomas commented on the possible benefits of new disclosure requirements on companies, along with the costs that increased regulatory burden can entail.