The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) has opened its first office in Beijing.
The board was set up in 2021 by the IFRS Foundation to act as the standard-setting body for sustainability reporting.
The original intention was to give the ISSB a global footprint by adding Montreal, Frankfurt, San Francisco and Beijing offices to add to the original headquarters in London and Tokyo, but it has taken til now for the China office to open.
A memorandum of understanding was signed at the end of 2022 between the IFRS Foundation and China’s Ministry of Finance.
The new office will be led by Zhengwei Zhang, who has been appointed as Beijing office director and special adviser to the ISSB Chair Emmanuel Faber.
Zhang most recently served as director-general at the Ministry of Finance.
“China, as the world’s second-largest economy and a major component in global supply chains, is an important jurisdiction in enabling the ISSB’s delivery of a global baseline of sustainability disclosures to meet the information needs of investors,” said Erkki Liikanen, chair of the IFRS Foundation trustees.
“China is fully committed to supporting the work of the ISSB and the development of global sustainability disclosure standards,” added Zhongming Zhu, vice minister of finance of China.
The office opening came just before the ISSB released its inaugural standards - IFRS S1 and S2 – which it claims will usher in a “new era of sustainability-related disclosures in capital markets worldwide”.
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