Review article
https://doi.org/10.22598/iele.2025.12.1.8
ENCOURAGING INSTITUTIONAL SHAREHOLDERS TO UNDERTAKE DOUBLEMATERIALITY-MINDED ENGAGEMENT PRACTICES THROUGH REGULATION - MUCH TO DO AND LOTS TO CONSIDER
Rafael Savva
; Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business, Lancaster University, Bailrigg, United Kingdom
*
* Corresponding author.
Abstract
The European Commission’s announcement in its 2021 Sustainable Finance Strategy that it will review EU stewardship and engagement suggests that it longs to see double materiality permeating engagement practices; and that it may be planning to instrumentalise the law to stimulate their undertaking analogously. This Article argues that the Commission should recommend reforming the law from the frameworks regulating institutional shareholders for their engagement practices if it aspires this law to steer them towards governing and undertaking “double-materiality-minded engagement practices”. For institutional shareholders to do the former, the effect of several factors on their treatment of engagement practices and the challenges involved with governing and undertaking double-materiality-minded engagement practices must be mitigated and overcome. The efficacy of this law in helping to address these as it interacts with key EU sectoral laws lies in facilitating market-led regulation about them. However, such market-led regulation will not enable the governance and undertaking of double-materiality-minded engagement practices without changing the structures guiding institutional shareholders’ treatment of engagement practices and the legal imperative for it. Care, though, should be exercised in reforming the law, for the reform must be mindful of the issues mentioned. In light of this, the Article proposes introducing forward-looking rules centred on stewardship teams and regulatory tool.
Keywords
shareholder engagement; sustainable development; sustainable business; sustainable finance
Hrčak ID:
332624
URI
Publication date:
24.6.2025.
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