Purpose: According to the Directive 2014/95/EU on non-financial information (NFI), from 2017 onwards, large companies of member states will be required to provide a series of social, environmental and governance disclosures. This paper, focusing on the evaluation of the quality of NFI in the UK and Italy before the implementation of the EU Directive, aims to investigate which factors affect the quality of NFI in the comparison between the UK and Italy. Design/methodology/approach: To evaluate the “state of the art” of NFI in corporate social disclosure of British and Italian listed companies, a non-financial score is created, based on specific items concerning the requirements of the EU Directive. To this aim, the authors analyzed the corporate disclosures of 343 large listed companies. Findings: Findings show that the UK is more compliant than Italy. So, regulation could be important to improve NFI in Italy more than in the UK. The results could represent relevant evidence for European policymakers of the action agenda “emphasizing the importance of national and sub-national CSR policies”. Originality/value: This research represents a preliminary analysis on the EU Directive and on its potential effects. Moreover, this study strengthens the previous literature on the quality of non-financial disclosure.

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.