A4S Annual Summit 2017 – A Call to Action
By Brian Lawson, Chief Financial Officer, Brookfield Asset Management and member of the A4S CFO Leadership Network
A4S Annual Summit 2017 – A Call to Action
Each November HM King Charles III invites CFOs to London for the Annual A4S Summit. This is a great opportunity to hear from leading experts on a variety of topics that are relevant to sustainability and finance, discuss progress made through the work undertaken within the A4S CFO Leadership Network and identify opportunities for future action. The Summit is also an excellent forum to share experiences, opportunities and challenges with other participants from the finance and investment community. Collaboration is a hallmark of the event.
This year also marked the inaugural year of involvement for the Canadian Chapter, which was formed when A4S and CPA Canada launched the first A4S CFO Leadership Chapter outside of the UK. Brookfield is a founding member of the Canadian Chapter, and we have had the opportunity to get directly involved in several valuable projects working together with other members of the A4S network in Canada and globally.
Key Takeaways from 2017 Summit
During the Summit, global CFOs and investors had the opportunity to participate in a number of well-organized and candid discussions to share and learn about strategies to facilitate the adoption of the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). A common theme around the room was the need for standard, common financial and operating metrics and the importance of increasing the availability of data to provide reliable, comparable information throughout the investment chain.
What also jumped out at me was the flow of conversation between the asset owners, asset managers and company CFOs in their desire to work together in ensuring the whole investment chain supports the adoption of climate-related financial disclosures.
As a global asset manager and investor, Brookfield Asset Management invests, owns and operates assets and businesses over the very long term. We are one of the world’s largest owners of real estate, infrastructure and renewable energy assets. Sustainability and resiliency are important criteria that we consider in evaluating investment opportunities and operating plans. Communicating with investors and wider stakeholders with relevant, reliable and comparable information about the long term performance of our portfolio is a need that we are committed to delivering on. We believe initiatives like the TCFD recommendations will make it much easier to do this.
A4S International Case Competition
I was also pleased to inform Summit participants on the inaugural A4S International Case Competition. This initiative is being hosted by the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto with support from CPA Canada, and Brookfield is delighted to be the lead sponsor. Business school students from universities across the globe have been invited to create new business and financial models that address the impact of increasing urban densification on our environment. This is of critical importance given 70% of the world population is projected to live in cities 20 years from now.
By engaging with the international academic community we are looking to draw innovative and actionable insights from future business leaders that have the potential to accelerate the transition to sustainable, resilient cities. To learn more please visit www.a4sicc.com.
The Canadian Chapter of the A4S CFO Leadership Network
As the Canadian Chapter of the A4S CFO Leadership Network closes out our first year, we are excited to build upon the foundation established by our European colleagues. The Canadian Chapter is undertaking projects intended to create compelling case studies and detailed worked examples to share with the world.
I know I speak for my Canadian Chapter colleagues when I say that it was very engaging and useful to share ideas at this year’s Summit and we look forward to regrouping in 2018.
