SASB Issues Provisional Sustainability Accounting Standards for Services Industries

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 17, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board™ (SASB)™, a 501c3 non-profit organization that provides sustainability accounting standards for use by publicly listed corporations in the U.S., today issued provisional Standards for ten industries in the Services sector. These provisional Standards, like all SASB Standards, help corporations comply with existing regulation, Regulation S-K, to disclose material information in the Form 10-K.

"As investors increasingly evaluate non-traditional categories and measures to make decisions, companies are seeking reporting standards for disclosing material sustainability information," said Gary Loveman, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Caesars Entertainment Corporation. "SASB has gained well-deserved recognition as a leading sustainability-standards organization that can offer forward-thinking executives tools to help them achieve sustainability leadership."

SASB's provisional Standards address sustainability disclosure topics relevant for companies in the following industries: Advertising & Marketing, Cable & Satellite, Casinos & Gaming, Cruise Lines, Education, Hotels & Lodging, Leisure Facilities, Media Production & Distribution, Professional Services, and Restaurants. Example disclosure topics include energy management, fair labor practices, data privacy, and supply chain management & food sourcing.   

"The diverse industries in the Services sector share a reliance on human capital as a main input, which raises issues ranging from wages and labor practices to diversity," says Dr. Jean Rogers, Founder and CEO of SASB. "These provisional Standards will provide investors with the comparable information needed to benchmark companies and make sound investment decisions."

SASB's standards development process is rooted in evidence and shaped by consensus. The working groups for Services industries, which included 271 registrants represented publicly traded companies with $909 billion market capital and investment firms with $9.7 trillion in assets under management.                                             

When analyzing the quality of Services disclosure topics in the latest Form 10-Ks and 20-Fs from leading companies in the sector, SASB found the following: 20 percent of disclosures are boilerplate, 36 percent are industry-specific, 10 percent are metrics; the remaining 34 percent represent a lack of disclosure. The goal of SASB Standards is to improve the quality of disclosure by providing investors with complete and comparable data sets.

SASB's Standards will remain provisional for at least one year after the issuance date. To provide feedback, please visit SASB's public comment portal.

About SASB
The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board™ (SASB)™ is an independent 501(c)3 organization that issues industry-specific standards for use in disclosing material sustainability information in mandatory filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Michael R. Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg LP, and Mary Schapiro, former SEC chairman, serve as chair and vice chair of SASB's Board of Directors, and Dr. Jean Rogers serves as Founder and CEO. More than 2,100 individuals representing $21.7T assets under management and $9.8T market capital have participated in multi-stakeholder industry working groups informing standards development to date. For more information about SASB, visit www.sasb.org, or follow us on YouTube, Twitter or LinkedIn.

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SOURCE Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)

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