Three news to start your week: September 18
Germany pushes to exempt SMEs from green reporting rules
(Financial Times)
In a move that officials fear might "gut" the EU's attempts to hold businesses accountable for their environmental impact, Germany is attempting to remove thousands of Mittelstand enterprises from the green reporting requirements.
According to a government coalition document adopted at the end of August, Berlin wants Brussels to broaden the definition of small and medium-sized enterprises, raising the threshold from 250 to 500 employees to "restrict the [bureaucratic] burden on them to what is really necessary."
EU officials calculated that the idea would spare between 7,500 and 8,000 enterprises from complying with recently approved sustainability reporting regulations. The figures were based on a study by the European Commission's think tank, the Centre for European Policy Studies.
China insurance boss jailed for life in corruption crackdown
(BBC)
As Beijing's campaign on the financial industry continues, Wang Bin, the former chairman of China Life Insurance, is now the next well-known executive to be imprisoned.
According to a court decision, Wang received a two-year reprieve and a death sentence. The judgment states that the sentence would be commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole after two years.
A court in Jinan, in the Shandong region of eastern China, convicted Wang guilty of accepting bribes totaling $44.6 million. In addition, Wang, the head of the company's Communist Party, received a year in prison for concealing 54.2 million yuan in offshore deposits without authorization.
After more than two years, President Xi Jinping has been taking action against corruption in the $60 trillion business, and he is the most recent head of a significant Chinese financial institution to fall victim to it.
France's SocGen pledges to plug gender pay gap with $107 million
(Reuters)
Societe Generale announced that it will increase the compensation of its female employees over the next two years by 100 million euros to reduce the gender pay gap.
Employers worldwide have come under fire for taking their time closing the gender pay gap, and research from nations with sizable financial services sectors, like Britain, indicates that the pay discrepancy between male and female employees at banks is sometimes far greater.
Many banks have promised to accelerate, but SocGen, a multinational company with 117,000 employees in 66 countries, is unique because it has openly allocated a budget and committed to using it.
The third-largest listed bank in France, SocGen, said it had attained the 100 million euro target by figuring out how much money would be required to narrow the gender pay gap for women in roles that were equivalent to or similar to those of males in cases where there was no justifiable cause for a difference in compensation.
