The International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) and the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) have announced their intention to merge into a unified organisation, the Value Reporting Foundation, providing investors and corporates with a comprehensive corporate reporting framework across the full range of enterprise value drivers and standards to drive global sustainability performance.
In a joint statement, the organisations said that in an era where the impacts of a global pandemic, climate change and growing inequality are intensifying, intangible value and the need for data-driven sustainability information have grown in importance. It added capital markets demand evidence-based, market-informed, and transparent data in order to deliver long-term value to shareholders while also helping secure the future of our people and our planet—reporting is an important means to this end.
“Information is the lifeblood of good decision making. Capital markets are hungry for information linked to enterprise value creation, but they cannot easily digest what comes from a fragmented reporting landscape,” said Robert K. Steel, chair, SASB Foundation board of directors. “This merger is an important step towards businesses and investors communicating with clarity and ease about the issues that matter most to financial performance.”
The Value Reporting Foundation will merge the SASB and IIRC into an international organization that it says aims to maintain the Integrated Reporting Framework, advocate integrated thinking, and sets sustainability disclosure standards for enterprise value creation. The merger directly responds to calls from global investors and corporates to simplify the corporate reporting landscape, providing the market with a clear solution for communicating about the drivers of enterprise value.
“The IR Framework and the SASB Standards are complementary. Integrated reporting describes all relevant value creation topics and the approach to integrating them in corporate thought and reporting. SASB provides the precise definitions of the data that should be reported for these topics in each industry. Organizations globally already use both to communicate effectively with investors about how sustainability issues are connected to long-term enterprise value, with these endeavours ultimately benefitting other key stakeholders. Under the Value Reporting Foundation, we will link the concepts between the IR Framework and SASB Standards even further,” said Barry Melancon, Chair, IIRC Board.
