Responsible Financing: International Standards and Transparency Trends in Doing Business

Abstract

Responsible financing has ceased to act as a narrow niche of finance market and today it involves more and more responsible finance institutions and companies interested in access to responsible finance tools. The basic condition for responsible financing implies availability of full trustworthy information about non-financial figures of the potential project for investment. Thus non-financial accounting has become an integral element of the responsible financing development in the world. The authors analyze key effective international tools on responsible financing and revealing non-financial information. They give characteristics of stages in shaping the institution of responsible financing. Apart from that they study regulation of responsible financing and non-financial accounting in the EU and Russian law. Today on international finance market we can observe a considerable demand both for developing systems of non-finance accounting standards and harmonization of draft standards, as all accounting standard systems use one and the same notions. The article investigates as an example a recent initiative of MSFO concerning setting-up the Council on sustainability standards. However, we should state the absence of the standard concerning revealing non-finance information by companies in Russia. Proposals were put forward about the development of responsible financing in Russia by making-up legislation in this field.