ESG News Review 21 — 27 September 2013

Dell was the most praised company last week after it received a 2013 Green Power Leadership Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Kohl’s Corporation was awarded a Sustained Excellence in Green Power Award, also from the EPA. The Coca-Cola Company received positive comments as it launched a partnership to deliver safe drinking water to rural communities in 20 countries. General Mills commits to sustainably source 10 priority ingredients by 2020. Finally, Sigma-Aldrich Corporation was recently named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices.

As for negative news, a judge ruled that a class-action suit targeting Google’s scanning of Gmail messages to deliver targeted advertising can continue based on a federal anti-wiretapping law. JPMorgan Chase, together with 10 other international banks, has been sued by a U.S. federal credit union regulator for alleged Libor manipulation. Bank of America was ordered to pay back wages to 1,147 African-Americans in hiring discrimination lawsuit.

The most praised companies last week were: Dell Inc., Kohl’s Corporation, The Coca-Cola Company, General Mills Inc. and Sigma-Aldrich Corporation.

And the most criticized were: Google Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corporation, Chevron Corp., and Danone.

The tag cloud below shows words found in news about these companies.

Words found in news about most praised and most criticized companies last week

This weekly review has been produced using the EthicalQuote reputation index run by Covalence, which tracks 2800 companies worldwide. It gives a summary of positive and negative news published last week about Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), ethics and sustainability.

The EthicalQuote reputation index integrates thousands of news pieces gathered online and classified according to 50 ESG criteria inspired by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), and to their positive or negative sentiment.

The next heatmap represents the sentiment calculated for each of the 50 criteria last week. The 50 criteria are embedded into 7 groups, following the structure of the GRI. The color indicates the ratio of positive news / total news.

Ratio of positive news / total news for 50 criteria last week 0 % 100 %

The map below represents countries where action described in the news takes place, the color reflecting the ratio of positive news / total news for each active country using last week’s data.

Ratio of positive news / total news 0 % 100 %

In terms of volume of information USA, Spain, Canada, Japan, China, UK, Australia, and France.

Last week statistics

These figures show the activity in Covalence EthicalQuote database during the week of 21 – 27 September 2013.

Historical statistics

Positives	342212
Negatives	197177
Total	539389
Sources	35401
Start	01.01.2002
End	27.09.2013

Subscribe to receive this weekly ESG News Review by email.