ESG News Review 17 — 23 May 2014

Dell was among the most praised companies last week, as it announced new sustainability initiatives among which carbon-negative packaging, through a partnership with Newlight Technologies, inventor and manufacturer of AirCarbon. Walmart is collaborating with Kellogg Company to support the livelihoods of rice growers and sustainable rice-growing practices worldwide. Volkswagen has earned the World Environment Center’s (WEC) 30th Anniversary Gold Medal award for its comprehensive commitment to environmental preservation and eco-mobility. Whole Foods Market earned the top spot in Greenpeace’s annual seafood sustainability ranking of U.S.supermarkets. MGM Resorts International has announced that it is joining the US Energy Department’s Better Buildings Challenge, a national pledge calling for organizations to voluntarily reduce their building portfolio energy use by 20 percent in ten years.

Credit Suisse was among the most criticized companies last week after it pleaded guilty and agreed to the largest penalty in an offshore tax case, paying $2.6 billion, after using Swiss accounts to help Americans hide money from the Internal Revenue Service. Union Investment, one of its major investors, slammed Deutsche Bank for its plans to raise 8 billion euros while facing allegations of gold price manipulation and foreign currency manipulation. The Open Internet Project, which includes 400 players in Europe’s digital markets, lodged a complaint with the European Commission against what it alleges are new anti-competitive abuses by Google (Agence France-Presse). The European Commission has accused JPMorgan, HSBC and Credit Agricole of colluding to fix a key euro benchmark borrowing rate.

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 dimensions, 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, France, Germany, Spain, South Africa, China, Switzerland, UK, and Australia were the main countries of action.

Last week statistics

These figures show the activity in Covalence EthicalQuote database during the week of 17 – 23 May 2014.

Historical statistics

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Positives	370304
Negatives	232512
Total	602816
Sources	39504
Start	01.01.2002
End	23.05.2014
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