Corporate Finance Center was founded in June 2006 at the National Research University Higher School of Economics. The Laboratory strives to promote high-quality research on the application of financial theory and methods to real-world corporate financial policy, corporate activity, and corporate governance studies. The Laboratory's goal is to advance new knowledge for companies and to provide a platform for discussing empirical findings in corporate finance.

The invitation to participate in the 4th edition of the International Annual Conference

The School of Finance at HSE University invites colleagues from different institutions to participate in the 4th edition of the International Annual Conference «ESG Corporate Dynamics: the Challenges for Emerging Capital Markets» on 27-28 November 2026 at the HSE Moscow campus.

We aim to create an effective and regular forum for worldwide academic exchange of research in the area of ESG transformation of companies in greater BRICS and other emerging capital markets. We aim to push forward the discussions on the impact of global ESG regulations on the national drivers of ESG agenda in these countries, how they respond to sustainability challenges at country and corporate levels and how corporate models, investing and financing policies are changing to implement sustainability principles.

The School of Finance launched this initiative in December 2023 to provide the framework for regular annual international discussions.

The workshop will push forward networking among universities, other institutions and ESG professionals in BRICS and other developing countries. In addition to academic papers, we encourage to submit analytical reports and practical case studies on the topic of the upcoming workshop. We plan to start the series of case studies on emerging capital markets published internationally and in Russia.

We propose to discuss a variety of topics in the following areas, but not limited to:

- Comparative analysis of ESG national regulations and the trends in global agenda;

- The twin transformation. Interaction of digitalization and ESG;

- ESG strategies and corporate performance;

- ESG ratings, their efficiency in measuring business and credit corporate risks for BRICS and other emerging capital markets;

- Islamic approach to sustainability and ESG transformation of a company. Practices in Middle East and other emerging economies;

- Green & Sustainable Finance in financial institutions.

- Climate finance and Climate risk management - ESG implementation in financial institutions (stock exchanges, banks, insurance companies, etc.);

- Impact investing and investor’s behavior in emerging capital markets;

- Sustainable finance and spillover effects over emerging capital markets;

- ESG reporting & impact accounting;

- Integrated reporting and digitalization of non-financial reports;

- Sustainability Reporting Assurance (SRA);

- The quality of non-financial data and reports, their influence on corporate valuations and risk- returns framework;

- Sustainability-related risks, stakeholders and risk management practices;

- Managerial accounting and internal controls implications of ESG transformation;

- Sustainable governance, emerging trends in the board rooms;

- Greenwashing, ESG Data and Business.

The conference will be held in a mixed format (offline and online). In parallel with the face-toface session, participants will be connected by special software tools. The offline part of the conference will be held at the HSE Moscow campus: Pokrovsky Boulevard, 11.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR PUBLICATIONS

The best academic papers will be selected for publication in a Special Issue of “Journal of Corporate Finance Research” (JCFR) (English version) indexed in Scopus.

The journal is published by Higher School of Economics in the electronic format (ISSN: 2073- 0438) since 2007. The Journal has been indexed by Scopus, RSCI (Russian Science Citation Index), EBSCO, SSRN, Crosref, DOAJ, SCImago Journal Rank etc. Since 2015, it has been included in the 1000 best Russian journals of RSCI (based on Web of Science.)

SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS

Document format – Word. Times New Roman font, 12 point, line spacing 1.5 with full justification. Length of the document – 3 typewritten pages (not exceeding 7,000 characters)

The following basic information should be presented in the Abstract:

• the author’s initials and surname;

• organization (educational institution), position, e-mail.

The abstract must be submitted in the language of the presentation by October 16, 2026 for foreign participants who wish to participate offline due to the deadlines for arranging a possible visit. In other cases, the abstract must be submitted by November 2, 2026 (inclusive).

Please, send your Abstract to the Program Committee to df@hse.ru.