The 3rd Annual Climate Transition Plans Summit, organised by City & Financial Global, will take place in London on 24 March 2025. Building on the success of previous editions, it will provide practical guidance on all aspects of drafting and using a transition plan, from the perspective both of the company itself and that of the users of transition plans, such as banks, investors and other stakeholders.
City & Financial Global’s summit on Managing Physical Climate Risk will focus on equipping financial institutions and corporates with the expertise and tools needed to address the escalating physical risks of climate change. This one-day event will serve as a platform for leading experts, policymakers, and practitioners to share practical strategies for managing these risks effectively within bond, loan and investment portfolios. The discussions will emphasise actionable insights designed to integrate climate resilience into financial decision-making.
The 4th Annual Natural Capital Summit, hosted by City & Financial Global, is a premier event that builds on the success of previous editions. This year’s summit is a must-attend gathering for financial institutions and corporates that want to understand and reduce their impact on nature, to prepare for the new nature-related reporting rules with which they will shortly have to comply and to learn about the many investment opportunities associated with natural capital.
The 19th annual edition of the UK Sustainable Infrastructure Summit will be held on 12 November at the Cavendish Conference Centre in London. This well-established event always attracts a sizeable gathering of leaders from the UK sustainable infrastructure industry, both from the public and private sectors.
The 2nd edition of the International Carbon Markets Summit, scheduled for 14 October, is being held at a critical time for the carbon markets. The summit will bring together global leaders, policymakers, and industry experts to discuss the latest developments and the future direction of both the compliance and voluntary carbon markets. With London positioned as a key global hub, the event will highlight the UK’s ambitious climate strategy and its pivotal role in driving international carbon market initiatives.
If 2023 was the year that we moved from disclosing climate risks to tackling them, 2024 is the year when we work out how to finance the process. Transition finance – broadly defined as financing corporate decarbonisation, with a particular emphasis on hard-to-abate sectors – has come of age and is likely to be the dominant theme at COP 29 and at other international gatherings for the rest of this year. Here in the UK, the Government has set up the Transition Finance Market Review to examine what the UK financial and professional services ecosystem needs to do to become the leading global centre for transition finance. This would bring very significant opportunities for financial and professional services firms.
Recent years have witnessed exceptional growth and technical progress in the offshore wind energy market within the UK and Europe. Both have consistently channelled significant investment into offshore wind projects, reinforcing their position as global industry leaders. With a diverse range of operational and planned offshore wind farms, coupled with ongoing technological innovations, cost efficiency improvements, and a growing commitment to sustainability, the UK and Europe have emerged as central players in the global shift towards cleaner and more sustainable energy sources.
In the UK as elsewhere, we are seeing extreme weather conditions, which will continue to worsen as we approach 2050, and perhaps beyond. Against this background, financial institutions of all kinds – banks, asset managers and insurers – need to put in place climate adaptation plans as part of their overall business continuity planning. These need to include the direct impact of climate change on running their own businesses and the indirect impact of the changing climate on borrowers, investee companies, policy holders, suppliers, employees and other stakeholders.
City & Financial Global’s 2nd Annual Biodiversity and Nature Markets Summit builds on the success of our Biodiversity Summit last year, which was widely regarded as providing a valuable introduction for financial institutions and corporates to the risks posed by biodiversity loss, and the opportunities presented by nature-based solutions.
The increasing use of climate change-related litigation and activism is becoming a risk which UK businesses of all types cannot afford to ignore. City & Financial Global’s Climate Change: Managing the Legal and Reputational Risks Summit, which is being held on 25 March, will provide delegates with a thorough analysis of all the key issues and practical guidance on how to mitigate the risk effectively.
As the focus shifts from design to implementation of the TPT Framework and sector guidance, City & Financial Global’s 2nd Annual Summit on Transition Plans for Financial Institutions and Listed Companies on the 20 February will provide practical, detailed guidance about the steps that financial firms and companies need to be taking now in order to ensure that they are prepared to meet regulatory expectations and produce transition plans of the required standard.
City & Financial Global’s 3rd Annual Sustainability Reporting Summit on 31 January will take a deep dive into the first two ISSB standards, which are a major step towards establishing a global ESG reporting baseline. While the standards build on the foundations and structure of the TCFD voluntary framework, they go much further in that they focus on all ESG-related matters, not just climate. They will also become mandatory as national authorities adopt them for reporting in their markets.
City & Financial Global’s 3rd Annual Natural Capital Summit builds on the success of last year’s event, which was widely regarded as providing a valuable forum which helped financial institutions and corporates gain a much better understanding of the steps they should be taking in terms of their impact on nature.
Efficient, joined-up carbon markets are an essential tool to support the transition to net zero. In particular, there is a widespread consensus on the need for a global, scalable, voluntary carbon market that will enable companies and investors to build on their net zero strategies by financing activities elsewhere that address their remaining emissions while on the journey to zero.
As you are aware, data lies at the heart of the revolution in climate reporting and ESG investing, and is, in many ways, its Achilles’ heel. Investee companies can still use a variety of different approaches to how they report ESG data, and what data they report, although the new ISSB standards will improve this situation when they come into effect. Asset managers are subject to a variety of different ESG regulatory reporting regimes and taxonomies across the world, despite recent efforts at harmonisation. Sourcing accurate and consistent highly quality ESG data is a major problem, as the market for its supply is very fragmented and wide ranging in terms of quality.
As part of its well-established portfolio of high-level infrastructure events, which have enjoyed government support, City & Financial Global is delighted to announce the next edition of the Annual EV Infrastructure Summit, which will be held in central London on the 7 June 2023.
While the world’s attention has rightly been focused on the climate change crisis, there is an increasing awareness that a second, linked crisis, that of accelerating biodiversity loss, has huge significance for society and the future of the human race. Biodiversity loss is among the top global risks to society.
As was clear from COP 27, countries and individual governments are struggling to prevent temperatures rising by more than 1.5 degrees by 2050, and the outlook is bleak. Meanwhile, in the UK as elsewhere, we are seeing extreme weather conditions, which will continue to worsen as we approach 2050, and perhaps beyond.
At COP26, the Chancellor announced that financial sector firms and listed companies will have to publish clear, deliverable transition plans in 2023, setting out how they will decarbonise and transition to net zero. This will be implemented by the Financial Conduct Authority as part of the regulatory regime.
Climate litigation and activism is on the rise, partly due to a greater awareness of the prevalence of greenwashing and partly because regulators are compelling financial institutions and corporates to disclose much more information about the climate-related impact of their activities.
Natural Capital Summit 2022 comes at a crucial time with companies coming under increasing pressure to identify, manage and report on nature-related risks and opportunities. This summit will assess in detail the challenges companies face in reporting on biodiversity, analyse the tools and methodologies available to assist in the process and discuss the regulatory future of this type of reporting. It is a summit not to be missed by any business wishing to stay ahead of impending regulation, streamline their reporting and lead on sustainability.
Putin’s devastating unprovoked war in the Ukraine has prompted many investors and corporations to pull out of Russia. Renewable energy stocks are being shorted whilst defence stocks shoot upwards. Approaches to ‘ESG’ investing are being scrutinised for the lack of foresight of many funds and data providers to the risks of investments in Russia. Amongst war, energy cuts, consumer product and food shortages, geopolitical tensions and more, where does ‘ESG’ fit in? A true reckoning of the power and future of this type of investing and management is underway.
At COP26, 450 financial institutions responsible for US$130 trillion of assets pledged their commitment to rapid decarbonisation. The UN’s climate champions said these companies could deliver 70 per cent of all the investments needed to reach net zero by 2050.
City & Financial Global and REIA are proud to co-present the Global Rare Earths Virtual Summit 2022 on Thursday, 31st March. This leading summit will provide a forum where senior policy members, mining, financial and supply chain executives can discuss how to manage the supply/demand squeeze for rare earths and meet the global need for a swift and responsible transition to green energy.
City & Financial Global’s 3rd Annual ESG & Climate Regulation in Financial Services on 1 February will address the huge swathe of new climate regulations being introduced on a regional, national and supranational level and provide a practical guide to navigating these regulations across jurisdictions. This presents significant challenges, and opportunities, for banks, asset managers and insurers.
The increase of climate change-related litigation and activism is becoming a risk which businesses cannot afford to ignore. City & Financial Global’s Climate Litigation and Activism Virtual Summit, 23rd November, will provide delegates with a thorough analysis of the key issues and practical guidance on how to effectively mitigate this risk.
This summit will provide companies and financial institutions with a comprehensive guide to all the key issues involved in nature-based financial disclosure and reporting.
This year’s edition of City & Financial Global’s well established summit on infrastructure policy and investment, which is being held on 14th September, comes at a particularly interesting point in the market’s development, and will include a keynote address from Lord Grimstone of Boscobel Kt, Minister for Investment, Department for International Trade and the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.
A globally accepted ESG standard will improve the quality and comparability of disclosure, making life easier for companies, investors, regulators and standard-setters. This summit will provide a timely forum for key stakeholders to discuss how to achieve standardisation in ESG reporting and overcome any issues limiting progress.
C&F’s timely virtual summit, ‘The Future of Carbon Pricing’ (27th April), will provide a backstop for recent political and regulatory developments. The summit will facilitate discussions between industry, investor, regulator, and advisory communities on the practical implications for companies in the round.
The UK government has made it clear that it wants to build back greener as we emerge from the devastating impact of the Covid-19 crisis, since it recognizes that the pathways to prosperity are the same as the pathways to net zero. The financial sector has a critical role to play in this and adjusting the regulatory framework in which financial services operate is one of the principal tools to effect the necessary changes.
This second annual edition of this well-attended forum, which is being held online on 11th February, will focus on key changes to the financial services regulatory regime being made in pursuit of a greener sector. It will provide practical, detailed guidance about the steps that financial institutions need to be taking now in order to ensure that they are prepared for, and fully compliant with, the emerging regulatory environment, as well as examining the new opportunities that this seismic shift in finance will bring.
This timely Virtual Summit will guide companies through the maze of interconnected laws, regulations and initiatives that are redefining corporate reporting as a result of climate change. It aims to highlight new tools available for reporting on ESG and where they fit with the plethora of other ESG regulation and guidelines.
Interest in ESG funds has surged in recent years due to climate change, evolving societal values and changing expectations about the responsibilities of business, all of which have encouraged investors to align portfolios with their values. The ESG & Sustainability Virtual Summit (14-15 September) will provide an in-depth analysis of the opportunities and challenges at this critical point in the development of ESG investing.
The Climate Risk and Green Finance Regulatory Summit will examine how the Green Finance Strategy is going to be implemented by the UK Government and financial regulators. It will clarify the practical steps that financial institutions need to be taking now in order to ensure that they are prepared and fully compliant. It will also examine the new opportunities that this seismic shift in finance will offer.