ESG AND SUSTAINABLE FINANCE BEST PRACTICES BROUGHT TO YOU FROM THE BOARDROOM OF CK HUTCHISON INTERVIEW WITH MS. EDITH SHIH, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF CK HUTCHISON
By Prof. Lapman Lee, Professor of Practice (ESG, FinTech, Governance), Hong Kong Polytechnic University Managing Director, Triniton Advisors, specialised in climate change and sustainability Boardroom strategic advice and training, governance and risk, investor relations and strategic communications. Today’s interview with Ms Edith Shih, Executive Director and Member of the Sustainability Committee. CK Hutchison, and Past International President, The Chartered Governance Institute and Past President, The Hong Kong Chartered Governance Institute, is part of a series of in-depth and in-person ESG interviews with leading Hong Kong-listed companies with the objectives to identify best practices. They include Bank of China (Hong Kong) Limited, CLP Power Hong Kong Limited, MTR Corporation Limited, and New World Development Company Limited covering all five industry sectors which the Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climaterelated
Financial
Disclosures
(TCFD)
I realised I was inside the command-and-control centre of a diversified multinational conglomerate with four core businesses (Ports, Retail, Infrastructure, Telecom) and operations across fifty countries. The very first thing I noticed when Edith entered the Board meeting room, with her graceful presence, was that she brought in a thick pile of printed materials (double-sided of course) under her right arm with colourful stickers protruding out of them. This turned out to be the draft of the CK Hutchison 2021 Sustainability Report with her hand-written edits all over the document. She told me that ‘this will see the light of day on Tuesday 31 May’ which was the following day. 1. How does a complex and diversified multinational conglomerate like CK Hutchison decide on which sustainability goals to focus on?
provided
industry-specific supplemental guidance. It was a clear and sunny Monday morning when I entered Cheung Kong Center and pressed the 48th floor for my 11 a.m. meeting with Edith, the most xxxxxx
senior female executive of the 300,000-strong CK Hutchison group, and a member of its seven-person executive board, chaired by Victor Li Tzar Kuoi.
‘It is indeed a challenge to create a set of sustainability goals and make them work for our organisation, considering the breadth and depth of our four core businesses, and geographical reach in over fifty countries,' and she goes on to say ‘though it is an xxxxx
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