As the impact of last September’s stimulus package wears off, China is pushing state-owned insurers to buy stocks while offering foreign algos a foothold in the country’s equity markets.
After surging by 30% in days after the Chinese government announced stimulus measures in September 2024, the country’s stock markets are moribund, as investors await US president Donald Trump’s decision on new tariffs. China is now pre-emptively forcing domestic institutions to buy shares while offering foreign liquidity providers led by Citadel Securities a chance of trading approval.
The “Implementation Plan for Promoting the Entry of Medium- and Long-term Funds into the Market” follows conclusions reached at last September’s Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee: that Chinese capital markets needed comprehensive reforms.
There are three main aspects to the initiative. The first is to increase the scale and proportion and medium- and long-term funds invested in A-shares. The market value of A-shares held by public funds will increase by at least 10% annually over the next three years, according to the authorities.
To support this, from 2025 30% of annual new premiums for state-owned insurance companies will be allocated to A-share investments, explained China Securities Regulatory Commission chairman Wu Qing. “The second batch of long-term stock investment pilots for insurance funds will be implemented in the first half of 2025, with a scale of no less than 100 billion yuan, and will be gradually expanded in the future,” he added.
The performance assessment cycle for funds is also being extended for public and state-owned funds. In this way, the authorities aim to increase the stability of medium- and long-term investments. “From the practical experience at home and abroad, this is also conducive to improving the investment returns of various types of medium- and long-term funds,” Qing explained.
Institutional investors will be pushed to engage more directly with listed companies in order to boost capital market investment, and investment banks and institutions will be supported in mergers and acquisitions to build stronger entities.
China has previously shared its intentions to open up to further foreign investment in order to boost capital markets. Currently, goals include the relaxation of access conditions for qualified foreign investors (QFIs), improvements to the listing mechanism between domestic and overseas listings, and an expansion of cross-border connectivity.
At the end of 2024, 866 QFIs had been approved – the majority of which are based in Hong Kong. Citadel Securities received approval in early 2023, allowing the firm to invest in the country’s stock markets and derivative markets. Recently, Citadel Securities China applied to establish a securities status in Mainland China.
“The door to the opening up of the capital market will only open wider and wider,” Qing affirmed.
Qing stressed that the implementation plan is a systematic, long-term project of institutional reform, requiring collaboration across financial regulators and government bodies. As such, coordination efforts between institutions such as the Ministry of Finance, the People’s Bank of China and the Financial Regulatory Bureau have been strengthened.
Legal regulatory actions will also be enhanced to improve investor protection and supervision efficacy, he added.
The plan states that it will continuously optimise the capital market’s investment ecology, taking stricter control over market entrances and exits. Listed companies will be encouraged to pay dividends and enact repurchases, in line with last year’s stimulus promoting share buybacks.
On the success of this project, Party Committee of the People’s Bank of China member Zou Lan noted: “More than 300 listed companies have publicly disclosed their intention to apply for stock repurchase and increase holdings loans, with an upper limit of more than 60 billion yuan. Among them, companies with a market value of more than 10 billion yuan account for more than 40%.”
On the appointments, Pham said: “I want to recognise and thank former Chairman Behnam and his staff. I am grateful for their combined many decades of faithful service to the CFTC, and I appreciate our talented CFTC staff who will be assuming these roles on an interim basis.”
Meghan Tente has been named acting general counsel, replacing Rob Schwartz. Tente was previously Pham’s chief of staff, before which she led the division of market oversight.
The market oversight division is now led by Amanda Olear, recently head of the market participants division. Tom Smith has replaced her in this role, formerly serving as a deputy director in the division. He has been with the CFTC for more than two decades.
Brian Young is the commission’s new head of the division of enforcement. Young joined the commission last year as director of the whistleblower office, before which he spent almost 20 years at the US Department of Justice. There, he worked in the antitrust and fraud divisions. He replaces Ian McGinley, who announced his departure from the commission earlier this month.
Clearing and risk is now overseen by Richard Haynes, who has been deputy director of the risk surveillance branch since 2021. Mauricio Melara has been named head of the office of international affairs.
Short interest in S&P stocks is at a record, as bearish sentiment builds on mega-cap tech companies.
Short interest has remained elevated following the 2024 US presidential election. The dollar value of equity shorts in the S&P500 hit an all-time high at US$820 billion at the end of 2024 compared to US$584 billion at the end of 2023. This is growing faster than long equity margin data as shown by FINRA margin statistics, going from US$ 700 billion at the end of 2023 to US$890 billion at the end of November 2024 or the index which returned 23% last year.
SPX, equal weighted and component weighted SI Days to Cover
While the dollar numbers are dramatic, short interest as a percentage of daily trading volume – or the days-to-cover ratio also shows significant growth. Expressed as a simple average, the S&P 500 index cover ratio reached a record high of 4.15 days in September 2024.
Since then, this equal-weighted cover ratio has fallen, while the market cap-weighed average has increased. This reflects a convergence of cover ratios between lower and higher market cap stocks. Thus, stocks with a market cap below US$50 billion had on average short cover ratios of 3.1 days at the end of 2023, while for market caps greater than US$50 billion, the average was 2.5 days. At the end of 2024, the respective cover ratios were 3.3 days and 2.8 days.
This trend can be seen in individual names which are being much more actively shorted. For example, Apple’s short interest was 3.63 days at the end of 2024 versus 2.1 at the end of 2023, while for Microsoft the cover ratio was 2.8 at the end of 2024 versus 1.9 at the end of 2023. Short interest in AI chipmaker Nvidia also reached a record high at the end of 2024.
Historical trends since 2020 indicate short interest is high now having trended higher since the beginning of 2023, with the weighted average hovering around 2.75 days to cover. The frequency distribution of the S&P aggregated days-to-cover ratio since 2020 reveals a rightward skew, with a significant cluster of observations requiring between 1.8- and 2.5 days to cover and a long right tail extending beyond 2.79 days. At the beginning of 2025, 57 components of the S&P 500 had a days-to-cover ratio greater than 5 days versus 50 at the beginning of the previous year.
Notably, at the end of December 2024, the data points out continued advances in short positioning since 2023, despite the index’s continued advance and resilient bearish activity, particularly in smaller constituents. Nate Anderson at Hindenburg Research might have disbanded for personal reasons but the short side of the US equity market is powering on.
ICE gained a stronger lead over Nasdaq in 2024, the difference in cash equity volumes between the two widening from 20.2% to 24.6%. However, market share was dominated by alternative trading systems (ATS).
US cash equity trading volumes were up year-on-year at both ICE and Nasdaq, with the exchanges seeing a significant bump in the final month of 2024.
According to SIFMA data, ICE took 18.2% of US equity exchange market share in Q4, and Nasdaq 14.4%. Despite trading volume growth, both saw a slight dip compared to Q3, where the exchanges held 19.6% and 16.1% respectively. Cboe, with a smaller piece of the pie, lost just 0.1% of the share over the quarter.
Market share by exchange group Q4 2024, SIFMA
Off-exchange trading surpassed the 50% mark in the final quarter of 2024, closing the year with 50.3% of market share. The use of ATSs has increased at an accelerating pace over the year, up 6.9% year-on-year – almost half of which occurred between Q3 and Q4.
According to FINRA data, both ATSs run by large banks and those operated by specialised firms are seeing success. In Q4, the largest systems by shares traded were UBS ATS, Intelligent Cross and Goldman Sachs’s Sigma X2.
As for the major exchanges, between December 2023 and November 2024, trading volumes at the two largest exchanges were relatively static. Nasdaq went from 39.2 billion to 41.1 billion, a 5% increase, and at ICE figures were up by an even more marginal 3% to 53.3 billion.
However, in December there was a marked increase in contracts traded with 56.8 billion US equity cash products handled at ICE to Nasdaq’s 44.9 billion.
These increases are reflected in the yearly figures, where ICE saw double-figure growth. Volumes rose 10% to 613.7 billion, compared to a 5% increase to 479.4 billion at Nasdaq.
By contrast, volumes at Cboe fell 2% over the month to 31.5 billion. YoY, on-exchange matched volumes for US equities dropped by 1% to 352 billion.
Mark Uyeda, Trump’s choice for acting chairman of the SEC, has a history of voting against enforcement, data collection and ESG measures, often the sole opposition to his fellow commissioners’ votes.
The Republican commissioner is expected to be in place before Trump’s permanent nomination Paul Atkins is confirmed by the Senate.
Atkins was appointed to the SEC in 2002 under the George Bush administration, and served as a commissioner until 2008. He has been vocal in his dislike of regulation via enforcement and large corporate fines, and has opposed the SEC Whistleblower Programme as a system that “creates perverse incentives”. He is expected to begin his term as chair this summer.
Uyeda has been a commissioner at the SEC since June 2022, and worked with senior leadership at the US Department of the Treasury and the US Department of Labour during Trump’s first term.
Over 2024, Uyeda opposed motions calling for stricter action around data management, special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) regulation and enhanced climate-related disclosures. During the year, he did not approve approximately 13% of the decisions, orders, rules and similar actions considered by the commission. A further 5% were approved with exceptions.
Notable examples include Uyeda’s opposition to recordkeeping and off-channel communication fines against 26 firms made by the SEC last August, totalling US$392.75 million.
In December, alongside fellow Trump-appointee Hester Peirce, he argued that the Commission’s plans to introduce a consolidated audit trail (CAT) – designed to allow regulatory tracking of national market securities in US markets – was “a system that one would expect to find in a dystopian surveillance state, not the shining beacon for liberty and the free world.”
The duo added: “The commission’s apparent insatiable appetite to obtain and store more and more surveillance data in its systems grows with each rulemaking—with little consideration on issues such as cost and purpose.”
In an earlier statement opposing enhanced and standardised climate-related disclosures for investors, Uyeda stressed his opinion that the commission should not be involved in social issues.
He said: “The commission ventured outside of its lane and set a precedent for using its disclosure regime as a means for driving social change. If left unchecked, we may see further misuse of the Commission’s rules for political and social issues and an erosion of the agency’s reputation as an independent financial regulator.”
Uyeda’s approach aligns with Trump’s plans to move away from disclosure regimes and actions seen as restrictive to economic growth.
Earlier in his career Uyeda was chief advisor to the Californian securities regulator, the Corporations Commissioner, and spent a number of years as a corporate and securities attorney in Washington DC and Los Angeles.
The Natixis-Generali merger, discussions for which began last year, is taking shape. The two firms will equally co-own the business, which is expected to launch in early 2026.
After signing a non-binding memorandum of understanding, the firms announced that Generali Investment Holdings CEO Woody Bradford will serve as CEO of the new venue. Natixis Investment Management CEO Philippe Setbon will be his deputy. The company will be established in Amsterdam, with operational hubs in France, Italy and the US.
The combined business will hold €1.9 trillion in assets under management (AUM), putting it in the top 10 of global asset managers by AUM and taking first place in Europe by revenues (€4.1 billion). The companies will retain control over asset allocation decisions for their respective investments.
This merger follows a series of European asset management consolidation announcements last year, including BNP Paribas’s discussions of a €5.1 billion deal to buy AXA IM and UniCredit’s reentry into the space with its Banco CPM.
Generali is contributing €15 billion in seed and acceleration capital across affiliates making up the joint venture. This will allow the company to benefit from further investments executed by asset management partners on its behalf.
Over the first two years of the new company’s operations, BPCE will receive preferred dividend rights and Generali the repayment tranches of a loan related to its recent acquisition of MGG Investment Group.
Natixis parent group BCPE’s CEO Nicolas Namias will serve as chairman of the board, and Generali’s CEO Philippe Donnet as vice chairman. The companies stated that employee representative bodies will be consulted before definitive transaction documents are signed.
Paul Johnson has joined Barclays as APAC head of equities as the firm continues to build out its presence in the region.
He reports to Jaideep Khanna, APAC CEO and head of markets, and Scott McDavid, global head of equities.
McDavid stated that APAC is a key region for Barclays’s global equities business, a sentiment echoed by Khanna last year. The bank is expanding its teams in Japan and India specifically, he said.
On the appointment, Khanna said: “[Johnson’s] extensive industry expertise and client-first approach will be instrumental in accelerating our growth ambitions across Asia Pacific.”
In H1 2024, income generated in Asian markets was down slightly year-on-year, from 5.2% to 4.9% of total income.
Based in Hong Kong, Johnson will focus on equity derivatives, equity-linked financing, electronic trading and prime within the region’s equity franchise.
He has more than 20 years of experience, and joins Barclays from his role as APAC co-head of equity derivatives and head of exotics equity derivatives trading at Goldman Sachs. Earlier in his career, he was a CEEMEA forex options trader at the firm before moving to Bank of America as head of CEEMEA and LatAm forex options trading.
Caroline Pham has been named acting chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), replacing Rostin Behnam.
Behnam announced his departure earlier this month, after seven years at the commission and more than three years as chairman. He officially leaves his post on 7 February.
Since his announcement, the CFTC has also seen clearing and risk director Clark Hutchison and departure of enforcement director Ian McGinley exit the commission.
Pham has been a CFTC commissioner since early 2022, before which she spent more than seven years in senior roles at Citi. These included managing director and head of market structure for strategic initiatives, head of capital markets regulatory strategy and engagement, and deputy head of global regulatory affairs.
Shaking off a hit from last summer’s volatility, Goldman Sachs finished 2024 with US$13.43 billion in equity trading revenue – up 14% year-on-year (YoY). With Trump in the White House, things can only get better, the bank says.
After another year of unprecedented events, Goldman Sachs finished 2024 with US$13.43 billion in equity trading revenue – up 14% year-on-year (YoY).
“While there remains some policy uncertainty, there is an expectation that the regulatory burden will be reduced, which should serve as a tailwind to risk assets and capital deployment,” CEO David Solomon told analysts.
Banks shared positive outlooks on the year ahead, anticipating a positive environment for equity trading – in part due to the expected regulatory relaxation in a second Trump term. A lighter touch to regulation would be welcome for big banks, which are pushing up risk exposures as they try to keep revenues growing.
Earlier this month, the Fed’s chief banking regulator Michael Barr announced that he was stepping down as vice chair of supervision. A supporter of stricter rules for banks, Barr’s actions since his 2022 appointment included pushing for larger capital requirements for systemically important banks under the Basel III Endgame proposal.
Both of those expected to be Barr’s Trump-appointed replacement, commissioners Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller, have opposed Basel III.
Predictions of easing regulation under Trump were clear from November. Alastair Borthwick, chief financial officer at Bank of America, noted the positive macroclimate for the asset class: “Equities benefited from increased activity around the US election. This quarter, our sales and trading revenue marked a fourth quarter record.”
Solomon also highlighted the recent suit filed by a number of US banks against the Federal Reserve. “We have long been concerned that the lack of transparency and the Fed’s current stress testing creates uncertainty and at times produces results we cannot understand and which can lead to higher industry-wide borrowing costs, reduced market liquidity and inefficient capital allocations.
“For the industry, the bar to take this step was incredibly high. And while the Fed has announced that it’s seeking to improve the stress test, the suit was filed to protect our rights. We believe it is our responsibility to continue to press for a more transparent regulatory process in order to foster a more efficient financial system that supports growth and competitiveness of the US economy.”
JP Morgan’s chief financial officer Jeremy Barnum added: “We are happy to see the clear recognition on the part of the Fed that many of the things that we’ve been talking about for a long time in terms of transparency and volatility. Let’s just hope that we see some significant progress on that front.”
Goldman chief financial officer Denis Coleman reflected on strong equity market performance across 2024, and the impact this had on equity underwriting revenues – which reached US$499 million over the year.
Growth at the bank has also been influenced by its narrowed focus on global banking and markets and asset and wealth management as its key businesses, Solomon said. “The organisational structure that we’re creating allows us to take advantage of [the] intersection between both public markets and private markets and the way you marry capital with issuers, but also marrying issuers and their need for capital with all different kinds of investors.”
Furthering this goal, the bank recently established the Capital Solutions Group to consolidate financing, origination, structuring and risk management solutions under the Global Banking and Markets group.
“[This positions] Goldman Sachs to operate at the fulcrum of one of the most important structural trends taking place in finance: the emergence and growth of private credit and other asset classes that can be privately deployed,” Solomon said.
Equity trading revenues
Morgan Stanley fell behind its peers, plateauing after a steep decline in revenue from over the year. The bank hit highs of US$4.94 billion in Q4 2023, spiking from Q3 2023’s US$2.51 billion, but this steadily declined over the next two quarters. Overall, revenues were up just 5% YoY.
Sharon Yeshaya, chief financial officer at Morgan Stanley, stated: “Results were largely driven by accelerating strength in equity underwriting as follow-on and IPO issuance saw meaningful improvements over the comparison period.”
She cited a particularly strong performance in the company’s Asian operations and increased interest in retail and alternative products as influential factors in this growth.
JP Morgan followed the opposite pattern, with steadily increasing revenues falling short in the final quarter and returning to the same levels seen in Q4 2023. Year-on-year, equity trading revenues remained static.
Agreeing with Yeshaya and Coleman, Barnum commented: “Underwriting fees were up meaningfully, primarily driven by favourable market conditions.”
“In terms of the outlook for the overall investment banking wallet, we remain optimistic about our pipeline,” he concluded.
CEO Jamie Dimon, only recently out of the race for US Treasury secretary, was probed during the bank’s earnings call to name his successor. “It’s not determined yet,” he said, but shared that he will not be leaving the bank immediately.
Citi ended the year with US$5.04 billion, marking the greatest improvement of the banks in equity trading revenues YoY – up 35% from 2023.
Jane Fraser, CEO, commented: “Markets saw its highest fourth quarter revenue in a decade and increased 36% with broad based gains across all products. Equities revenues increased 34%, driven in part by strong execution of strategic client transactions in cash equities.”
Equity trading revenues
Bank of America remained fairly steady in its revenue performance across 2024, reaching a peak of US$2 billion in Q3 and ending the year with a total US$7.14 billion, down marginally from 2023’s US$7.15 billion.
Looking ahead, Goldman’s Solomon warned, “there’ll be some surprises to the ups and there’ll be some surprises to the downs – as there always are.”
Climate disclosures and transition finance: APAC’s path forward
By Shanny Basar, Senior Writer, Markets Media Group
2024 has been a pivotal year for climate, marked by record-breaking hurricanes, devastating floods, and the looming milestone of surpassing the 1.5°C warming threshold, a benchmark set by the Paris Agreement representing a tipping point for avoiding the severe impacts of climate change. It has also been a turbulent year in global politics with governments and multi-nationals slowing down on climate action. On a positive note, convergence has been achieved around the disclosures set by the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB), including in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. The region has witnessed landmark transition finance deals, such as the world’s first sovereign climate transition bonds from Japan, but challenges remain around the availability and quality of ESG data.
Disclosures – a global baseline The ISSB was formed in 2021 at COP26 in Glasgow to develop global standards for high-quality, comprehensive sustainability disclosures focused on the needs of investors and financial markets. Although ISSB sets a global baseline, the progress in sustainability has differed across regions. Jules Bottlaender, Head of Sustainable Finance in APAC, Securities Services at BNP Paribas, said innovation and regulation around sustainability have moved very quickly in the European Union, while in contrast, there has been a backlash in the US. He described the progress in APAC as being in the middle of the latter two regions and more government-driven, as there is fragmented regulation across different countries in the region.
Jules Bottlaender
“APAC is on a good track, closely monitoring industry’s developments to implement swiftly the successful formulas,” he added. For example, following a public consultation, Singapore Exchange Regulation (SGX RegCo) has said it will incorporate the ISSB climate-related requirements into its sustainability reporting regime. From the financial year 2025, all issuers will have to report Scope 1 and Scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions. Boon Gin Tan, Chief Executive Officer of SGX RegCo said in a statement that this is an important step to enable larger issuers to report their Scope 3 GHG emissions from financial year 20261.
Similarly to Singapore, the Australian Government’s Treasury has released a Sustainable Finance Roadmap and mandated sustainability reporting aligned with ISSB from the beginning of 2025. The Australian Sustainable Finance Institute (ASFI) has launched a second round of public consultation on the development of an Australian sustainable finance taxonomy. ASFI is seeking feedback on the climate change mitigation criteria for all six priority sectors for development (including electricity generation and supply; minerals, mining and metals; buildings; manufacturing and industry; transport; and agriculture and land use), a Do No Significant Harm framework, minimum social safeguards and ways in which the taxonomy can be used2.
New Zealand was the first country in the world to legally mandate climate change reporting for financial institutions in October 2021 and has required sustainability reporting since the beginning of 2023. The country also has a 2030 roadmap, which includes plans for a sustainable finance taxonomy which have been published by the industry-led Aotearoa New Zealand Sustainable Finance Forum3.
New Zealand’s External Reporting Board (XRB), the country’s standard-setting authority, has implemented climate-related disclosure standards for specific companies, drawing from the Task Force on Climate- Related Financial Disclosures’ (TCFD). The board plans to review the country’s climate standards by December 2025 to assess whether updates are necessary to align with current or upcoming requirements4.
In November 2024, the XRB published a consultation on proposed amendments to its climate and assurance standards and approved three of the four proposals. XRB authorised a one-year extension to the adoption provision for Scope 3 GHG emissions disclosures due to current data challenges; a one-year extension to the adoption provision for anticipated financial impacts disclosures and a new one-year adoption provision relating to the assurance of Scope 3 GHG emissions5. However, it did not adopt a proposal to delay transition planning by an additional year due to strong user demand for this information.
Iain Martin.
“Data has now become critical for firms in New Zealand. As a local custodian, our role is to help these firms by providing the necessary data and reporting services to meet these obligations,” said Iain Martin, Head of Securities Services, New Zealand at BNP Paribas.
Martin said: “For Securities Services at BNP Paribas, we have been focused on ensuring our organisation has a positive impact on the world. This has meant embedding ESG features into our core solutions, sharing ESG insights globally and giving clients access to market leading ESG and sustainability reporting.”
Transition finance It has been estimated that USD $3 trillion a year by 2030 is needed to support the global transition to a net-zero economy by 2050. More than half of it is needed in APAC, and especially in emerging markets6. Bottlaender said: “You can only improve what you can measure. ISSB filled this gap by framing climate disclosure in jurisdictions covering over half of the world’s GDP. The next big challenge is to transition our economies.”
There was a landmark in transition finance this year when the Japanese government issued the world’s first sovereign climate transition bonds in February and raised JPY 1.6 trillion7. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has also announced that it wants to extend its Green and Sustainable Finance Grant Scheme and expand the scope of the subsidy to cover transition finance instruments8.
Data challenges However, Bottlaender highlighted that APAC lacks data on the energy transition and in addition to the lack of availability, there are challenges around quality and consistency. He said: “Countries in APAC such as Indonesia, India, Thailand have significant populations and need to create an ecosystem to gather transition data.”
Nearly three quarters, 71%, of respondents in BNP Paribas’s 2023 ESG Global Survey of 420 asset owners and managers, hedge funds and private equity firms said that inconsistent and incomplete ESG data is a significant barrier to the greater adoption of ESG, an increase of 17% from 2021. To overcome these data challenges the majority, 65% of respondents, said they use and compare multiple sources of data, while more than one third, 37%, conduct their own research methodologies9.
To help institutional investors with their ESG data challenge, Securities Services at BNP Paribas allows them to store their fund data on a central platform, Manaos (a fintech which is a subsidiary of BNP Paribas), to obtain a comprehensive and transparent view of their investments and estimate their ESG footprint. The platform was developed to meet the advent of regulation in Europe around the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), and so can now benefit firms in APAC. Manaos can seamlessly connect clients’ portfolios with a wide range of third-party ESG data vendors and fintechs, all secured by bank-level security standards.
In October 2024, BNP Paribas’ Securities Services also launched an ESG investment compliance monitoring service in Australia and New Zealand to support local clients and avoid potential compliance breaches. The service, which has also been successfully deployed in Europe, includes a wide range of ESG criteria and delivers external assurance that funds are meeting their ESG commitments through automated post-trade assessment10.
Martin said: “BNP Paribas’ ESG monitoring solution can help each client screen their portfolios against customised and flexible criteria using a range of data feeds from external and internal sources. They can include or exclude specific activities, compare portfolios to ESG ratings and benchmarks, review carbon intensity against a benchmark and review adherence to global standards.”
Embracing a wider path going forward Now that climate disclosure has been enforced in many parts of the world, there needs to be more specifics about the distinctions between green finance and transition finance, as well as between climate mitigation and adaptation.
Indeed, by focusing solely on green assets, the fact that most of the economy needs to transition is overlooked. Similarly, by concentrating only on mitigation, the necessity to adapt to the physical risks of climate change is neglected, and becoming more pronounced every year.
Additionally, 2024 will be the first full year since the establishment of the TNFD (Taskforce for Nature related Financial Disclosure). It will be interesting to see the outcomes of the first disclosures. Meanwhile, the Taskforce on Inequalities and Social (TISFD) was created in September 2024, tasked with the challenging mission of developing a framework to address the most overlooked aspect of sustainability.
While the journey toward full adoption and implementation will require collaboration between governments, businesses, and financial institutions to address regional nuances and challenges, it also presents an opportunity to drive meaningful change. For APAC, a region rich in diversity and economic dynamism, embracing these standards not only aligns with global ESG trends but also positions businesses to lead in sustainable innovation and resilient growth.
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