Finance Seminar Roni Michaely

In this week’s finance area seminar, Roni Michaely from University of Hong Kong presented “Value, Values, and Opportunities in Corporate Environmental Practices“

This paper draws on survey responses from over 500 sell-side analysts and text analysis of 270,000 research reports to uncover how financial analysts think about corporate environmental practices.

The findings reveal that analysts devote more attention to environmental issues than to AI or cybersecurity—but primarily through a financial lens. Most view environmental initiatives as value-creating opportunities, not just risks or ethical imperatives.

Analysts’ discussions of environmental factors are predictive of future earnings, underscoring that climate-related opportunities are not peripheral — they are financially material.