Boujnah (Euronext):"When we talk about, ESG, we talk about non-financial, performance, it's the core of the mission of addiction"

Stéphan Boujnah, CEO e Chairman di Euronext, in occasione dell'apertura della Euronext Sustainability Week ha dichiarato:

"The European sustainability Week is a sort of getting to scale of a pure Italian initiative, is another example of how European markets have become much more intelligent than they used to be. So the attitude of the Europeans to the market goes to all the groups that have made that possible. When we talk about, ESG, we talk about non-financial, performance. And clearly it's at the core of the mission of addiction. And very often people asking, why do you do that? The exchange is, historically the talk of growth. It's the responsibility for merchants to exchange ideas.

It's a place where people who have too much money are trying to to find ideas. It's a place where people have too many ideas and not enough money, not trying to find money And, when you have a change of collective preferences and that is a move to not financial preferences. This is a place where the debate and the communication has to happen, and it's and it's not really new. I mean, clearly the ESG debate is now crystallizing the non-financial performance impact. And we have to to stay calm about that. The one of the reasons why we are a bit surprised at the momentum and ESG and even the debate on fragmentation is now, is that in most European countries, ESG is not new. Yes, the debate on the environment is new, but on the social commitment of corporates, I think we are unanimous. 

When Fernando Falcone decided to allocate a significant part of his money to pay tribute to the the memory of his legacy, here is his son and killed in the joke had to create a public school. It was only as you uh, when? When surveyed, Benjamin created the the business school when the Philips was building a significant number of houses and schools in Heidelberg in the 19th and 20th century, when she said, here she is not new in terms of concept, it's just the fact that it migrated from private, family owned businesses, uh, paternalism type of approach towards market structure performance, which is, the same in terms of governance, the momentum towards some diversity of governance, some some transparency of governance is a momentum that had its own drivers, irrespective of the ESG trend that crystallised over the past 5 to 10 years.

So we have to be very,calm about this ESG, debate in particular in the context where there is now a debate in the US about whether or not there is a future. I mean, you may have seen that. And what we see clearly is that the dust is settling down now, clearly on the report on the environment and climate change. They seem to be a consensus that it is in the best interest of companies to factor the cost of environment and the negative externalities of what they do in the coal mine, measuring their performance. There is a specific US debate on oil, because some investors do not want to embark into this debate and don't want to to discount oil sector investment.

There is a crystallization on the S side because honestly, we all try to fit within ESG and even in the best of all or performance things that are consistent with the global practices and again, this is not very new in particular for us to refer to where we are native as ESG, players. When you I come from a country where there are 48% of the GDP is in taxation and 58% in social spending. So it's a sort of a native ESG country. So for Europeans, perspective is different and the same for governance, where everyone is moving towards some form of inclusion and diversity by claiming our differences with the US. I mean, most of us, when we interact with us investors on the on diversity, for the governance part, they come with a definition or perspective on diversity, which is much stronger beyond gender, etc.. And and that's where we have a debate with some US investors because they have a certain perspective.

We have another one because we have different history. I remember discussions with some investors a lot. And I mean, why don't you do more about ethnic diversity and how do you measure ethnic diversity in the past, and I was I had to tell them. We just don't measure it because it's not legal. Because the last time we measured race, diversity in Europe was, between January uh, 1933 and May 1945. And the common wisdom in Europe is that the experience was not that successful. And, Europe is a better place if you don't put any more list of names and it forms needs of religions, uh, race or specificities. So that's why we have a different approach of that because we have a different history. The UK, by the way, has a different history from the continent because they never experienced the discrimination in the same way as we did in the continent. Therefore, they are more they are closer to us.

So the difference with the US is there and and we have to live with that.In, in the US there are profound differences also between regions. I mean, we are seeing investment funds of of some states states pension funds deciding not to invest any more in ESG funds. But we are seeing other state, uh, pension funds super dedicated to investing more in ESG funds. And what does it tell us? It tells us the diversity of the of the preferences of it tells us the diversity of the US society and that that's what is embedded in any ESG in ESG discussions. And that's this is what it is. So I think the ESG concept in general is should be called non-financial performance concepts.

And with a consensus on oil and the debate on society and and governance, because at the end of the day, it's just about onboarding complexity in the boardrooms and the complexity and the executive committees. It's all about what do we do beyond liquidity, performance return yield. And that's that, that's. That's that's an element of complexity in terms of metrics, in terms of information, in terms of of compliance, in terms of of consistency. So what we are trying to do as Euronext and as the market is what everyone else is doing, but with all particular perspective of the individual."