Sustainable Stock Exchanges : A Performance Analysis of Sustainability Practices at BSE & NSE

Sustainability Practices and disclosure patterns are growing importance among stock exchanges, companies at a rapid stage at all over the world by establishing the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) reporting framework. GRI Initiated sustainability reporting guidelines as GRI G1, GRI-G2, GRI-G3, GRI-G3.1, Non-GRI, GRI G4, Citing-GRI and latest (since 2016) GRI Standards. The GRI sustainability disclosure practices has grown to 428 listed companies in 2019 from 43 in 2012 in India (GRI Sustainability Disclosure Database). The UN Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE) Initiative is working to implement the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) for stock exchanges. In India the securities regulator SEBI has mandated the sustainability reporting for top 500 listed companies based on market capitalization as per Business Responsibility Report (BRR). The paper has focused on the impact of sustainability indices on the performance of benchmark indices of BSE and NSE and also on sustainability reporting practices of BSE and NSE. For the sustainability reporting analysis, BRR reports of BSE & NSE taken into consideration and made a comparative study of principle-wise performance. To examine the impact of sustainability initiatives on performance of benchmark index, the multiple regression analysis technique has applied on SPSS software. The results of the paper show that the BSE is out performed in overall sustainability disclosure performance than the NSE sustainability performance. And also concludes that, the sustainability products of BSE and NSE has showed major impact on the performance of benchmark indices, SENSEX and NIFTY 50 of BSE and NSE