Following the firm commitment, since 2022, to sustainability as a fundamental and future area in training for executives, Católica Porto Business School welcomed the director of the Climate Strategy and Execution Department of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and alumna of Economics, Maria de Melo, and the director of Sustainable Financing Policy at EBRD, Russell Bishop, for a session open to current and former students of the School’s Executive Education.

Under the theme “Sustainable Finance”, the masterclass focused on topics on the European agenda for planning a more sustainable future. Maria de Melo began by highlighting that the EBRD is a bank that operates differently from the rest, being maintained by more than 70 countries, and its main objective is to support the construction of market economies and democracies in countries in Central Europe and Asia.

The presentation continued with an overview of the financial sector’s and companies’ current approach to sustainable financing and sought to answer the questions that brought many of those present to the session. The focus was, therefore, on transition planning, prudential regulation, and the mechanisms companies are adopting, for example, in decarbonisation. In the end, there was still time to observe some emerging areas, such as nature financing itself and obligations linked to sustainability. 

Católica Porto Business School thus maintains its commitment to excellent training, always seeking to increase the skills and knowledge of its students on current topics. In ​​sustainability, the school has a training portfolio for executives, including the Chief Sustainability Officer Executive Course, the second edition of which starts this month, and the Postgraduate Course in Sustainability and Regeneration, which begins in October.