12.11.24

Full seminar for boards and executive committees

Festa - Center for Sustainability recently held the seminar Progressive Boards - Profitability, Responsibility and Impact. The seminar, which was Festa's first event exclusively for boards and CEOs of member companies, was held at the Grand Hotel on November 8. The seminar was fully attended and it is clear that there was a great need for a special event to go in depth with board members when it comes to sustainability issues. This commitment and interest shows that board members are taking sustainability issues seriously, which is both pleasing and also in line with developments in Europe and elsewhere in the world.



Arnar Másson, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Marel and a member of the Board of Directors of Festa, moderated the symposium where a select group of experts in the fields of sustainability, governance and business shared their knowledge and experience.

Elva Rakel Jónsdóttir, CEO of Festa, discussed the environmental and international issues that have a formative impact on the operating environment of Icelandic companies.

"Active risk management is number one, two and three. Understanding how we can shape investments in infrastructure and assets based on these developments. Understanding future market developments based on these scenarios and then setting a strategy that makes it clear to internal and external stakeholders what both the negative and positive impacts of the company on environmental and social factors are and how those factors will then be dealt with. In other words, through sustainability disclosure, which is then followed up with a decisive transformation plan." These were the very appropriate closing words of Elva Rakelar.

Following this, Tómas N. Möller, Senior Counsel at the Icelandic Merchants' Pension Fund and Chairman of the Board of Festa, discussed the impact of new regulations on the duty of representation and the composition of boards.

Rakel Eva Sævarsdóttir, founder of Trail Sustainability Consulting and a board member of Festa, discussed the opportunities inherent in considering sustainability in the operation of companies and how sustainability can be linked to profitability. Ingunn Agnes Kro, chairwoman of RARIK and a board member on several boards, discussed the benefits of systematically working on materiality analysis in operations, and Ásthildur Otharsdóttir, co-owner of Frumtak and a board member, discussed how boards can best organize their sustainability work.