EBook - Issues for Companies: 2020

Morrow Sodali launched this year’s series of articles – Issues for Companies: 2020 – to alert and advise clients about important issues facing them during the 2020 annual meeting season.  Since publication of the series on our website earlier this year combined to create this EBook, the COVID-19 global pandemic has surged to the forefront, taking precedence above all other issues facing global communities.  COVID-19 has forced both companies and investors to think more deeply about the importance of ESG, corporate purpose and sustainability in ways that were barely contemplated before the arrival of the global pandemic.  

In this year’s client memo, A Common-Sense Approach to Corporate Purpose, ESG and Sustainability, we described the changing environment and the difficult questions it was raising for companies and institutional investors even prior to the advent of COVID-19.  Today it is increasingly evident that that at their 2020 annual shareholder meetings issuers will face challenges to their sustainability in entirely new ways, as the evolving global pandemic pushes ESG issues to the forefront of the governance dialogue and investors grapple with the most effective ways to effectively assess ESG risks and opportunities.