Private Equity US ESG Summit - Hosted by Private Equity Wire

The SEC is becoming more hawkish around marketing and all forms of reporting – how does this impact the evidencing good ESG?
How are US regulators evolving ESG regulation, how can your compliance/legal professionals and heads of ESG work together to absorb rule changes – will the SEC copy Europe or will regulation move in a different direction?
EU distribution and investment: What should your business know about SFDR and its upcoming changes?
Article 8 funds v. Article 9 funds in EU – relative benefits of these categorisations and the accompany reporting burdens
How do managers deal with a patchwork of regulation and national ESG ‘peculiarities?

Building an ESG approach from scratch – what are the required building blocks and given standards are shifting all the time, how do you prioritise and keep up?
ESG does not stand still – how do you evolve your policies and approach, without succumbing to hasty decision making or group think?
Creating an ESG committee – how do you create an internal committee capable of providing guidance and how can its suggestions influence the direction of the business and its funds, and influence the decision making of senior staff?
How should you evidence this ‘creative’ thinking around ESG with LPs – is it more reporting, an annual report or via more direct outreach?
Benchmarking your ESG against your peers – should this be a simple process or are there multiple nuances based on distinct strategies and investment styles?

With multiple standards and reporting options, what represents best practice? Are we seeing harmonization around a single set of standards or one reporting mechanism – if not, why not?
With ESG covering such a large range of issues – can the sector ever alight on coherent ways to evidence progress – is this process being helped (or hindered) by the differing information needs of internal stakeholders, LPs and regulators?
How to partner with service providers to get your reporting right – how should you be working with your admin etc and what can providers really offer to improve the process?
Using ESG benchmarks, scorecards and third-party data sources – are these genuinely useful? And how best to leverage an array of different reports and rating standards?

Proving progress: aligning manager and investor interests on ESG – how to collaborate in the reporting process and what are the operational headaches?
How to talk about ESG at the capital raising stage – how to square the circle of ‘moral’ duty and returns.
How do investment consultants think about and judge asset managers’ ESG capabilities, from portfolio approaches to gender diversity within investment teams and across-the-board ESG risk management?
Is there a disconnect between asset managers and allocators/consultants when it comes to ESG expectations from funds?
How do ESG expectations now play into the investor due diligence process?

Current hiring trends – what do ESG teams currently look like at PE firms? How should they engage with the investment process, as well as ops at the management firm level?
How much influence do they wield – how can they become more than ‘good practice’ hires and make a real impact, particularly in influencing decisions at the top of the firm?
Where do senior ESG professionals come from? Are they PE/financial service ‘lifers’, or are you seeing a move into the space from other sectors, including the development space (UN etc)? How is this diversity of talent changing the perspective on ESG?
How do you train the rest of the staff on ESG and get them to take it seriously?