Governance and Sustainability

Trusted Strategies to Engage With Your Stakeholders

Helping companies understand and communicate their corporate governance and sustainability value proposition. We embed structure, create strategies and provide directional guidance, in addition to creating disclosures for your internal and external audiences.

Corporate Responsibility Advisory

Corporate sustainability/ESG consulting and support, providing structure, strategy, and ESG disclosures to successfully navigate the evolving sustainability landscape for the long term.

Corporate Governance Intelligence Council

The only program of its kind to combine a 360-degree perspective from all your constituents to provide year-round strategic governance consulting, benchmarking and research.

Board Evaluation

Independent, comprehensive 360-degree board evaluations. Fully customized approach will provide actionable and measurable insights to meet your board's objectives.

Corporate Responsibility Advisory

Corporate sustainability/ESG consulting and support, providing strategy, structure, directional guidance and ESG disclosures to successfully navigate the evolving ESG landscape for the long-term.

A team with expansive experience and training, always on the forefront of ESG best practices.

Photo of highly engaged and aligned employees

Services

Gap analysis and risk assessment

Peer, sector and industry benchmarking

Internal ESG structure

Issues/materiality assessment

ESG education and awareness training

Board presentations and education

ESG communication strategy

Investor and stakeholder engagement

Dynamic reporting with filterable optionality

Consulting

Ratings agency response

ESG Perception Studies

ESG Disclosure Guidelines Are Complex and Evolving

In the last decade, the ESG disclosure landscape has had a seismic shift, with some calling it the Wild West. There is a great deal of information out there that can be daunting to navigate.

Multi-Stakeholder Approach

Corporate responsibility requires a multi-stakeholder approach, aligned with the modern definition of the purpose of a corporation. Your many stakeholders – including investors, employees, suppliers, customers and communities - all require an ever-growing array of environmental, social and governance information.

Different stakeholders view ESG through different lenses and care about different topics. As a company, it is important to consider all of these viewpoints while developing an ESG framework, while conveying how your ESG program is aligned with, and drives, corporate strategy for sustained performance with appropriate oversight mechanisms.

Rivel will assist in addressing all your stakeholders to minimize risk, drive credibility and reputation, and maximize valuation potential.

Our Approach Identifies What Matters to Your Company

Expectations from investors are clear, they want more ESG disclosure to understand ESG risks, opportunities and business resiliency. But what does that mean for your company?

We take a practical, multi-stage, affordable and common-sense approach to help companies develop disclosures that are pertinent for specific industries and factor in company size and complexity.

The goal is to provide strategically and financially relevant ESG-related information that is focused and decision-useful for capital markets, in addition to disclosures that are reflective of your company’s reputation, culture, values and ethics.

A Forward-Thinking Team with a Wealth of Experience

Rivel’s Governance and Sustainability team has a wealth of knowledge and experience in all aspects of the ESG landscape.

Our team is trained and certified in multiple reporting frameworks - including SASB, TCFD, UN SDGs, GRI, and CDP - and experienced in assessing ESG impact from multiple perspectives, including asset managers, ratings agencies and corporate issuers.

We help our clients navigate the world of reporting frameworks, ratings agencies, investor policies and expectations, and coalitions to help minimize risk exposure, understand and embrace opportunities, and take back control of their narrative.

Rivel is a member of the SASB Alliance. The SASB Alliance is a program for organizations and individuals that helps drive and support the goal of more decision-useful, material, and cost-effective sustainability disclosure.

Rivel is SASB alliance organizational member

Process Goals

The Ecosystem

Our Process

Strengthen and improve internal procedures
Ensure suitable alignment with peers
Create focused communications that are integrated with existing governance and investor messaging
Gain a deeper understanding of primary stakeholders' perceptions and expectations regarding ESG issues
Achieve measurable results

Our Deliverables

Structure Internal Process

Develop Long-term ESG Strategy

Investor Tear Sheet

Stakeholder Engagement

Sustainability Reports

Dynamic ESG Microsite

Issues/materiality assessment

Corporate Governance Intelligence Council

Rivel’s Corporate Governance Intelligence Council (CGIC) is the only program of its kind to combine a 360-degree perspective from all your constituents – the global buy-side, proxy voters, senior management, investor relations, legal counsel, and the corporate secretary. Members receive custom benchmarking and gain access to the most powerful and comprehensive governance library and database in the industry. This is coupled with year-round consulting for all governance, engagement and disclosure initiatives.

Consulting

Year-round governance consulting
Strategic governance engagement and disclosures
Shareholder resolution response

Research

Custom benchmarking
Investment and corporate communities
Voting analysis, projections and risk assessment

Community

Governance and Sustainability Rapid Action surveys
Vast library of research and data
Conferences and virtual events

Board/Management Insight

Annual presentations to board and management team
Assistance with board materials
Drive governance and engagement best practices

Benefits of CGIC Membership

Year-round governance consulting

Rivel’s team of governance experts are available at any time to counsel you on governance issues that may surface and to give guidance for internal and external functions and communications.

Strategic governance engagement

Rivel’s corporate governance team will provide guidance in preparing comprehensive investor engagement strategy and shareholder messaging for routine or resolution response situations. This includes identification and analysis of audience, creating custom discussion points and SEC-filed presentations, investor dossiers, and engagement preparedness.

Disclosures

Evaluation of proxy disclosure and related investor messaging. Guidance on language, clarity, consistency, structure, alignment with all investor messaging, and identification of areas for enhanced disclosure. Additional opportunity to produce fully designed enhanced proxy statements.

Custom benchmarking

Company-specific, custom benchmark studies. These could include topics such as board composition, diversity and compensation, engagement activities and disclosures, strategic engagement roadmap with investor messaging and target identification, compensation and governance structure. Each project is custom designed.

Voting analysis

Registry analysis to provide insights on voting policies, impact of proxy advisors, historical vote analysis for all top holders.

Provide a voting policy assessment.
Determine influence of proxy advisors.
Highlight who to call for governance engagement.
Historical vote analysis.
Vote analysis of peer companies and on specific issues.
Governance voting policy risk assessment.

Vast library of research and data

Full access to our entire library of research (over 650 governance resources). Research is conducted amongst the corporate groups (corporate secretary, general counsel and investor relations officer) and institutional investors/proxy voters. The library also includes institutional investor proxy voting policies and procedures.

Conferences, Rapid Action surveys and virtual events

We connect you with your peers through our vendor-free conferences, Rapid Action surveys, and Virtual Exchange meetings. Understand how other companies are addressing similar challenges through a confidential process in 48-72 hours, leading to personal networking and engagement opportunities with your peers.

Board and Management Presentations

Assistance with board materials and presenting to internal audiences on the latest developments and trends impacting governance and sustainability.

Board Evaluation

Independent, comprehensive 360-degree board evaluations that focus on self- and peer-assessments, board leadership, committee reviews and alignment with management. Our fully customized approach will provide the right solution to meet your board’s objectives and provide actionable insights to help execute on measurable goals.

With the increased demands of the modern board of directors, many companies are taking another look at the board evaluation and education process. Many boards understand that self-administered surveys may not be the most effective approach every year, and are adopting independently-administered, comprehensive evaluations designed to elicit meaningful feedback from every board member.

Best practice demands that board evaluations should not just be about the basic elements of meeting processes and board functionality. A truly effective and independent evaluation critically examines the most important responsibilities of a board – its impact on valuation, risk management, strategic oversight, corporate culture and long-term stewardship.

Evaluation Features

Independent and objective

Multi-stage process (online & live)

Telephone or in-person interviews

In-person or non-recordable presentation

Fully customizable

Efficient and effective

Focus on strategy, culture, board alignment and risk

“

“As ESG has grown in importance for the institutional investment community and our customers, we decided the time was right for Quanta to allocate resources for a more formalized approach to communicating our ESG initiatives. Given varying frameworks, the litany of ESG rating agencies and the challenge of organizing a number of internal stakeholders to launch this process, we knew we needed outside expertise to help us organize and prioritize our efforts. Dave and his team certainly have that expertise and were very effective with helping us get a game plan together to get our ESG program organized and started the right way.”

Kip Rupp, CFA, Vice President, Investor Relations, Quanta Services, Inc.

"When Walker & Dunlop first began to explore the ESG landscape, we felt extremely daunted given the wide range of company disclosures and the number of frameworks and rating systems that exist. Rivel helped us navigate all of this, starting by gaining a deep understanding of our company’s operations and goals and then taking us step by step through the process of creating the foundation for a comprehensive ESG program that we can build upon for many years to come."

Kelsey Duffey, Vice President, Investor Relations, Walker & Dunlop

"Rivel’s expertise has been invaluable to Vistra as we navigate the web of ESG disclosure protocols and third-party rating constructs. Rivel’s counsel has helped us to simplify and improve our ESG-reporting process to focus on high-impact disclosures while being responsive to the information needs of our various stakeholders."

Molly Sorg, Vice President, Investor Relations, Vistra Energy

Trusted Strategies to Engage With Your Stakeholders

Helping companies understand and communicate their corporate governance and sustainability value proposition. We embed structure, create strategies and provide directional guidance, in addition to creating disclosures for your internal and external audiences.

Corporate Responsibility Advisory

Corporate Governance Intelligence Council

Board Evaluation

Corporate Responsibility Advisory

Services

ESG Disclosure Guidelines Are Complex and Evolving

Multi-Stakeholder Approach

Our Approach Identifies What Matters to Your Company

A Forward-Thinking Team with a Wealth of Experience

Rivel is a member of the SASB Alliance. The SASB Alliance is a program for organizations and individuals that helps drive and support the goal of more decision-useful, material, and cost-effective sustainability disclosure.

Process Goals

The Ecosystem

Our Process

Our Deliverables

Corporate Governance Intelligence Council

Consulting

Research

Community

Board/Management Insight

Benefits of CGIC Membership

Year-round governance consulting

Strategic governance engagement

Disclosures

Custom benchmarking

Voting analysis

Vast library of research and data

Conferences, Rapid Action surveys and virtual events

Board and Management Presentations

Board Evaluation

Evaluation Features

Join the Governance Intelligence Council

Contact the Governance & Sustainability Team