Thom Wetzer appointed to ESMA’s Sustainable Finance Expert Group

Associated people

Thom Wetzer, Associate Professor of Law and Finance and founding Director of the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme, has been appointed by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) to its newly-established Consultative Working Group (CWG) on Sustainable Finance.

Thom Wetzer (Oxford)
ESMA is one of three European Supervisory Authorities in the European Union (EU) and has a remit to improve the functioning of EU financial markets, enhance investor protection, and promote stable and orderly financial markets. As such, it has a central role in the development, implementation, and enforcement of the EU’s ‘Green Deal’ and, more specifically, its ‘Action Plan on Financing Sustainable Growth’. The new CWG will advise ESMA’s Coordination Network on Sustainability (CNS), which promotes ‘the coordination of regulatory, supervisory and enforcement initiatives across securities regulators in the EU in the field of sustainable finance’.

Experts on the CWG come from various backgrounds and different segments of the sustainable investment value chain to support a cross-cutting, transversal approach to sustainable finance matters. The appointment is for an initial two-year term.

Thom Wetzer commented:

Building more sustainable societies is one of the major policy challenges of our time, and the financial sector has an essential role to play in that transition. Given escalating sustainability risks, challenging economic conditions, and increasing scepticism around the ESG movement, this is the moment for the sustainable finance agenda to mature so that it drives and facilitates genuine progress. I am excited and honoured to have the opportunity to work with my new colleagues to help advance ESMA’s mission in this highly salient area.

At Oxford, Thom has conducted (co-authored) research on a range of related topics, including mandatory corporate climate-risk disclosures, credible corporate climate commitments, climate-driven asset partitioning, climate risk in government bond markets, the role of science in enabling climate litigation, the meaning of net zero, and ‘sensitive intervention points’ (including disclosures) in the post-carbon transition.