This study of the corporate transition to net zero is based on in-depth interviews with senior executives & investors, conducted between September and October 2020.
We surveyed the senior leadership or management teams (C-suite level minus one) in 250 companies. Companies were MNCs (defined as having a genuinely global reach) headquartered in developed markets, and MNCs and large domestic companies headquartered in emerging markets. Companies were headquartered in the following markets / regions: US, Western Europe, Middle East, Africa, North Asia, South Asia, ASEAN and Greater China.
We surveyed 100 fund managers, strategists and emerging market specialists within the asset management investment profession, identified as having a global perspective. Half were from tier one firms (the top 50 global asset management firms) and half were from tier two firms (the top 300 global asset management firms outside of the top 50).
To gauge where companies are right now on their transition journey, we scored them against four key dimensions of transition: measurement and reporting; appropriate investment; strategy and leadership; and organisational transition. Some of the survey questions asked the senior executives to score their companies against factors that pertained to these four dimensions of transition. We created an overall score per dimension and then made this a score out of 100 so that each dimension was comparable. We calculated the maximum possible score for each dimension, and then calculated the percentage that companies scored out of the possible maximum or ‘perfect’ score. In each instance, the closer a dimension is to 100, the closer it is to the ideal or perfect possible approach that can be conceivably taken, within the realms of our survey questioning.
