Apex Securities Research Manager enlightens participants about ESG

UTAR Centre for Entrepreneurial Sustainability (CENTS) in collaboration with Apex Securities Berhad and UTAR Faculty of Accountancy and Management (FAM), organised a talk titled “Introduction to ESG” on 14 September 2022 at UTAR Sungai Long Campus.

The talk aimed at understanding Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and ways to embrace it. The speaker for the talk was Research Manager of Apex Securities Berhad Lee Cherng Wee. Also, in attendance at the talk were Chairperson of CENTS Assoc Prof Dr Mohammad Falahat Nejadmahani, the Head of Department of Finance Dr Lim Boon Keong, and FAM lecturer Raymond Ling Leh Bin.

After a short souvenir presentation session, Lee moved on to discuss several topics. One of the topics included the definition of ESG. He explained, “ESG stands for Environmental, Social and Governance. Environmental factors refer to the impacts that a company can have on living and non-living things, while social factors are those that can affect individuals, groups or societies. Lastly, governance factors refer to the organisation’s governance structure, composition, knowledge, roles and remuneration.”

Dr Falahat (left) presenting a souvenir to Lee

Lee also spoke on the reasons why ESG is currently trending, factoring it to higher awareness and demand from inventors, the ever-growing interest in ESG by millennials, and the rise of regulatory standards on ESG disclosure. He also shared the impacts of ESG, with some examples being product recall, corruption, environmental harm, and unfair treatment of staff. Lee then listed a few ESG products, including Individual Stocks, Exchange Traded Funds (ETF), Mutual Funds, and Green Bonds.

Lee explaining the challenges of ESG

Explaining the challenges in ESG, Lee finally said, “One of the main challenges of ESG is called Greenwashing, where the company provides false or misleading information about the environmental impact brought about by them or their products.” He added, “Another ESG challenge is small companies have to incur high costs and resources in order to implement ESG, which can really affect them. Not only that, the data and information about the company’s ESG activities may not be accurate. This is due to a couple of reasons, such as different scores provided by different rating agencies, the lack of assessment of certain companies by the rating agencies, and the fact that these ratings are based on public data such as annual reports, which are unverified and can be manipulated by the company itself.”

The talk ended with a short Q&A session, a group photography session, and a speech by Apex Securities Berhad Executive Director and Head of Dealings Kong Ming Ming, and two UTAR alumni who are currently working at Apex Securities Berhad.

Front row, third from left: Raymond Ling, Dr Falahat, Kong, and Lee