SEC Aims to Balance ESG, Accounting in Likely Disclosure Rules

SEC officials are weighing how existing accounting and reporting requirements will work with new mandates that will require companies to disclose more details about climate risks, the regulator’s top accountant said Thursday.

Ensuring that reporting on environmental, social, and governance factors, or ESG, pairs with existing accounting rules “is a very big part of our thinking,” Paul Munter, acting chief accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission, said in remarks to a Financial Executives International conference.

• U.S. companies are awaiting draft climate rules that will clarify what the SEC will expect them to say about climate risks in ...