Effective on August 1, 2022, the Value Reporting Foundation (VRF) consolidated into the IFRS Foundation. At that time, stewardship of the SASB Standards—including all active projects—passed from the SASB Standards Board to the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB).

The ISSB completed this project in December 2023. Visit this page for information on the ISSB’s work on this project.

The information below is intended to provide interested parties with archival information regarding how the SASB Standards Board approached this work prior to the VRF’s consolidation into the IFRS Foundation.

Project objective

The Project’s objective was to conduct research and consultation to define the strategy to improve the international applicability of SASB Standards. This strategy included defining potential standard-setting activities designed to improve the international applicability of disclosure topics and accounting metrics.

While the scope of the Project did not include executing these specific standard-setting activities, it comprised the foundational research that would enable subsequent standard setting to be conducted in line with the Project’s original intent.

Project background

Capital markets operate in a global context. Many investors’ portfolios are allocated among companies domiciled or with operations in various countries around the world. At the same time, many companies have complex and geographically diversified supply chains, operations, and customer bases.

Therefore, the project objective was to ensure that the disclosure topics in SASB Standards reflect globally relevant sustainability issues and that associated accounting metrics were relevant and decision-useful indicators that can be widely adopted by companies for their sustainability reporting, regardless of the country of domicile or their geographic operating footprint. A staff review found that approximately one-quarter of SASB Standards metrics may have been challenging to implement in certain geographic regions. The Project aimed to identify opportunities—including but not limited to a potential standard-setting project to revise metrics—to enhance the international applicability of SASB Standards.

SASB Standards technical staff recognised that complexities and differences in regulatory environments, voluntarily adopted standards, industry structures and business models across geographic regions create inherent challenges in developing internationally applicable sustainability accounting standards. Nevertheless, through research and stakeholder engagement the staff aimed to enhance the decision-usefulness of the standards’ content across jurisdctions.

Completed

Published documents

The SASB Standards Board did not publish any documents or drafts prior to the VRF’s consolidation into the IFRS Foundation in 2022.

Supplemental materials

• Consultation Questionnaire, Excel Spreadsheet, August 2020.
• Globalization Project Pipeline webinar, video, July 2020.

Board meeting outcomes

September 2019

• The Standards Board discussed topics related to the Standards Internationalization Advancement project during the September 2019 meeting, in the section “Global Gap Analysis” (slides 30-40).

Board materials

Please visit our standard-setting archive for more information.