ESG data and disclosures read with the same rigour as a balance sheet.
Credit ratings from different agencies usually agree. ESG ratings often do not. The reasons are built into how ESG ratings are made, and they change how investors should use them.
Of the three letters in ESG, governance has the clearest link to investor losses. Most large Indian corporate failures began as governance problems before they became financial ones.
A common approach is to value a company and then add or subtract a little for its ESG score. A better approach puts each material ESG issue into the model where it actually changes value.
Climate risk is often treated as a reputational issue. For lenders and investors, it is increasingly a financial one, showing up in cash flows, borrowing costs and the price of equity.
Three large Indian cement makers publish emission intensity figures that look comparable but are not. Their latest reported numbers, the differences in units, boundaries, scopes and assurance, and how to compare them properly. Educational, not investment advice.
Green bonds and sustainability-linked bonds both carry a sustainability label, but they work in opposite ways. One controls where the money goes. The other controls what the issuer must achieve.
A step-by-step reading of a real BRSR: Ambuja Cements' filing for FY 2025-26. What the workforce, safety, energy, emissions, water and related-party data show, the effect of two mergers on the numbers, and the questions an analyst would ask. Educational, not investment advice.
India's BRSR reports run to dozens of pages. This opinion piece argues that most of it is narrative, and points to the small part that investors should actually read.