According to Directive 2014/95/EU on disclosure of non-financial information from 2017 onwards, large companies (exceeding 500 employees) headquartered in Member States will be required to provide a series of social, environmental, and governance statements. The Directive was transposed into Italian law by Legislative Decree 254 of 30 December 2016.The aim of this paper is to evaluate the information gap for Italian companies and,consequently,the adjustments required by the new Directive on non-financial information. In order to analyze the level of non-financial and diversity disclosure, we created an assessment model called “Non-financial information score”, which records the required information as a percentage. We apply it to a sample of 223 large companies.The results (with an average NFIscore of about 49%) show that, in spite of what has previously emerged in the European debate about the application of the Directive on the part of large companies, an information gap remains, although the implementation of the directive should help to fill it in the coming years.In this sense, the potential contribution of the EU directive to non-financial disclosure in Italy appears to be greater than we had expected. Thus, in accordance with the literature, this paper appears to confirm the role of regulation in improving the quality of disclosure of non-financial information.

This paper aims at contributing to the debate on the relationships between the European financial sector and sustainable development. Using a non-financial disclosure analysis of 262 European banks, the research sought, first, to investigate the “scope” of the contribution of European banks to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and, second, to explore the factors that seem to differentiate the SDGs approach among banks. The results show that country of origin, legal system, and adoption of an integrated report seem to differentiate banks in terms of contribution to the SDGs. The business model and stock exchange listing, conversely, do not seem to represent discriminatory factor in the contribution of banks toward the SDGs. The study can be useful for managers and decision makers to develop policies to support organizations in contributing to the SDGs.

Conservation finance embraces a series of innovative financing mechanisms aimed at raising and managing capital to be used for the conservation of biodiversity. The climate emergency and the pursuit of sustainable development underline the criticality of financial support for achieving this goal. Funding for the protection of biodiversity, in fact, has long been disbursed by governments in a residual form, only after they have dealt with social needs and political challenges. To date, the main challenge of conservation finance is to identify solutions that not only generate new revenue for biodiversity, but also effectively manage and allocate existing funding to provide a mix of social and community benefits as well. The paper, therefore, aims to act as a wake-up call, urging academics working in economics and finance to turn their attention to resolving the financial problems faced by conservation. Through a comparative bibliometric analysis, the study aims to outline the structure of scientific research on the topic of conservation finance, to understand the state of the art, and to identify open questions and new research trends. The results of the study show that the topic of conservation finance is currently a prerogative of scholars and journals of ecology, biology and environmental sciences. Finance scholars pay very little attention to the topic and yet there are many opportunities/needs for future research. The results are of interest to researchers in banking and finance, policy-makers and managers.

Although some studies show the benefits of adopting integrated reporting (IR), its real value has not yet been sufficiently investigated. As integrated reporting development implies high costs for the company, the management has to evaluate the economic advantage of such investment. This study aims to establish whether a high quality IR influences firm market value. Specifically, we investigate whether shareholders take into account the good quality disclosure provided by IR in their investment assessments and reward the outstanding firms. We proxy high quality disclosure by the awards assigned to IRs published by a sample of South African listed companies for the period 2013 to 2016. Using event study methodology, we found out that the stock market reacts positively to award announcements, the value attributed by shareholders to the quality of IR is persistent, grows over time and is particularly high in non-financial companies. This evidence should encourage managers to invest in improving IR disclosure quality. Key words: Integrated reporting, corporate social responsibility, market value, disclosure quality, event study, shareholder.