Exchange in Focus: Boursa Kuwait guides market on sustainability reporting through training and guidance

19 December 2017

(19 December 2017) Building on its commitment to promote sustainable and transparent capital markets as an SSE Partner Exchange, Boursa Kuwait announced the launch of its new voluntary sustainability disclosure guide and held a training session on ESG disclosure on 19 December 2017. “Boursa Kuwait is fully committed to promote sustainability both internally and among our listed issuers. We have set a comprehensive sustainability action plan to engage with our companies and support their new sustainability journey”, said Khaled Abdulrazzaq AlKhaled, CEO of Boursa Kuwait. The exchange also announced a Memorandum of Understanding with Sustainability Excellence formalizing the deployment of a series of strategic sustainability initiatives aimed at further enhancing transparency and disclosure of sustainability/ESG information among Boursa Kuwait listed companies. The training session covered the business case for ESG and sustainability, provided an overview of global investor assessment approaches to ESG and presented Boursa Kuwait’s voluntary sustainability disclosure guide to support listed companies to report on ESG information. The new guidance is aligned with the recommendations of the Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE) initiative’s Model Guidance and the recommendations of the World Federation of Exchanges (WFE).”Earlier this year, Boursa Kuwait has made a formal commitment to drive sustainability in financial markets by becoming a member of the United Nations led initiative – The Sustainable Stock Exchanges Initiative,” the guidance states. “By joining this initiative, Boursa Kuwait aspires to lead the path for a more sustainable future by fostering market confidence in the State of Kuwait and actively contributing to national priorities.” Boursa Kuwait is the 20th stock exchange to produce voluntary guidance on sustainability reporting for their market since the launch of the SSE’s campaign encouraging all stock exchanges to provide environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting guidance. More details on this campaign can be found here. Boursa Kuwait announced joining the SSE as a Partner Exchange in commitment of transparent and sustainable capital markets in January 2017.

About the SSE

​The SSE initiative is a UN Partnership Programme organised by UNCTAD, the UN Global Compact, UNEP FI and the PRI. The SSE’s mission is to provide a global platform for exploring how exchanges, in collaboration with investors, companies (issuers), regulators, policymakers and relevant international organizations, can enhance performance on ESG (environmental, social and corporate governance) issues and encourage sustainable investment, including the financing of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The SSE seeks to achieve this mission through an integrated programme of conducting evidence-based policy analysis, facilitating a network and forum for multi-stakeholder consensus-building, and providing technical assistance and advisory services.