In May 2019, the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited (HKEX), launched a round of consultation on reviewing its Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Reporting Guide to improve issuers’ governance and disclosure of ESG activities and metrics. The conclusions to the consultation was published in December 2019. Key changes to the ESG Reporting Guide include introducing mandatory disclosure requirements to include a board statement setting out the board’s consideration of ESG matters, application of Reporting Principles “materiality”, “quantitative” and “consistency” and explanation of reporting boundaries of ESG reports; amending the “Environmental” key performance indicators (KPIs) to require disclosure of relevant targets; upgrading the disclosure obligation of all “Social” KPIs to “comply or explain” etc.