12 January: Value creation in a sustainable manner, Professor Mervyn King

CPA Australia and Melbourne Law School’s Centre for Resources, Energy and Environmental Law (CREEL) and Centre for Corporate Law and Securities Regulation (CCLSR) cordially invite you to ‘Value creation in a sustainable manner’, presented by the esteemed Professor Mervyn King SC.

Gain insights from one of the world’s leading thinkers on the changing role of the corporation and how this may play out in complex regulatory and legal environments.

In our resource deprived world, value is no longer looked at through a financial lens, but rather, a sustainability lens. The result? A global shift away from short-term profit with a focus on financial capitalism to long-termism and inclusive capitalism. However, unless value is created in a sustainable manner, an organisation may actually be destroying value. As part of meeting these challenges in the changed world of the 21st century, Chief Financial Officers should perhaps view themselves as Chief Value Officers.

Professor King’s presentation will be followed by an open forum discussion and broader analysis of the potential effects of local and international developments in climate change litigation. How will increased shareholder activism force corporate decision-makers to consider and manage climate change risks? Will it drive a longer term perspective and preserve corporate value?

Professor Mervyn King, Senior Counsel University of South Africa

Professsor King is a Senior Counsel and former Judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa. He is Professor Extraordinaire at the University of South Africa on Corporate Citizenship, Honorary Professor at the Universities of Pretoria and Cape Town and a Visiting Professor at Rhodes. He has an honorary Doctorate of Laws from the Universities of the Witwatersrand and Leeds, is Chairman of the King Committee on Corporate Governance in South Africa, which produced King I, II and III, and is First Vice President of the Institute of Directors Southern Africa. He is Chairman of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), Chairman Emeritus of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and a member of the Private Sector Advisory Group to the World Bank on Corporate Governance. He chaired the United Nations Committee on Governance and Oversight and was President of the Advertising Standards Authority for 15 years. He has been a chairman, director and chief executive of several companies listed on the London, Luxembourg and Johannesburg Stock Exchanges. He has consulted, advised and spoken on legal, business, advertising, sustainability and corporate governance issues in over 60 countries and has received many awards from international bodies around the world. He is the author of three books on governance, sustainability and reporting and sits as an arbitrator and mediator internationally.