Stockholm, March 30, 2020.

Lars Söderfjell was elected to Chair of the Sveriges Finansanalytikers Förening (SFF) – the Swedish Society of Financial Analysts at their 2019 AGM.

He has a long history within the SFF helping to contribute to their work promoting the role of financial analysts in Sweden. He is Head of Equities at Ålandsbanken and chair of the SFF’s Company Valuation commission.

A report launched in February this year which should be of interest to EFFAS members and especially those concerned with ESG is “How to improve climate-related reporting: A summary of good practices from Europe and beyond” It is the result of collaboration between European preparers, users and other stakeholders within the Project Task Force on Climate-related Reporting (PTF-CRR), and it consists of a main document and two supplements. Andrea Gasperini a member of the EFFAS CESG Commission on Environment, Social and Governance and of the Italian Association for Financial Analysis (AIAF) was part of this task force.

Madrid, March 13,2020

Bankia bets on EFFAS CESGA certification to train its professionals in ESG^[i].

The in-fashion green certificate the managers of Santander, BBVA or Caixa are fighting for^[ii]

The primary focus of the PTF-CRR was on identifying good reporting practices and assessing the level of maturity in the implementation of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations, while also taking into consideration the climate-related reporting elements of the EU Non-financial Reporting Directive and the related European Commission non-binding guidelines.

The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the EU’s securities markets regulator, published its Strategy on Sustainable Finance on 6th February 2020. This should be of special interest to Financial Analysts and especially to those who are, or are considering becoming, EFFAS Certified ESG Analysts. The strategy sets out how ESMA will place sustainability at the core of its activities by embedding Environmental Social, and Governance (ESG) factors in its work. ESMA’s key priorities include transparency obligations, risk analysis on green bonds, ESG investing, convergence of national supervisory practices on ESG factors, taxonomy, and supervision, all of which are on the CESGA® syllabus.