The Coca-Cola Company, Dow Chemical and Duke Energy are among 24 major companies that have agreed to develop a methodology to assign value to the world’s forests, freshwater and marine systems. The Corporate Eco Forum and The Nature Conservancy are leading the Valuing Natural Capital initiative, announced at the United Nations’ Rio+20 Earth Summit. Committed [...]

General Motors Company shows a high volume of social information in Covalence database today, reflecting tough negotiations currently taking place with trade unions in France and in South Africa. In France where it agreed to acquire GM Strasbourg the General Motors Company is challenged by the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) over wage claims. In [...]

Experts from three European universities have unveiled findings showing some auto makers are wasting billions of euros worth of environmental and social resources. The researchers warn this could add unnecessary costs to the auto industry’s already heavy financial burden. (…) They concluded that General Motors, rated the worst, had a ‘sustainability value’ of minus EUR9.8 [...]

A Detroit, le Salon de l’automobile, qui a ouvert ses portes à la presse dimanche 11 janvier, fait grise mine. Oubliés les soirées paillettes, le champagne et les mises en scène hollywoodiennes… Crise économique oblige, les constructeurs ont serré les budgets marketing et opté pour la sobriété. (…) Dans leurs discours, les patrons des Big [...]

Thousands of South Africans who suffered under apartheid won the right yesterday to sue a number of companies, including BP, Citigroup and Ford, for allegedly helping to perpetrate human rights abuses. The US Supreme Court ruled that three class actions can use the American legal system to sue approximately 50 international corporations who they believe [...]

En matière de réchauffement climatique, l’industrie pétrolière est sans surprise la première montrée du doigt. Le produit final et le processus de production sont jugés polluants par un grand nombre d’observateurs. Leader du secteur, l’américain ExxonMobil est la principale cible des critiques. BP et Shell sont également perçues comme polluantes (voir le graphe ci-contre). Mais [...]

In a classic display of corporate cynicism, Toyota fights stronger emission standards in U.S. Just because Toyota, which overtook General Motors last year as the world’s biggest automaker, has been lobbying against higher U.S. standards doesn’t mean it intends to launch a new fleet of gas guzzlers. It just knows that Detroit’s failure to sell [...]

General Motors is determined to “remove the car from the environment and energy debate” in the next 10 years by doing away with the internal combustion engine altogether. The world’s second largest car company now views hydrogen fuel cell power as the “the end game,” according to its director of advanced technology vehicle concepts Dr [...]

In the business world these days, it appears that just about everything is for sale. Multi-billion-dollar deals are commonplace, and even venerable institutions such as the Wall Street Journal find themselves put into play. Yet companies are not the only things being acquired. This may turn out to be the year that big business bought [...]

Five years ago, General Motors Corp. gave the world the Hummer H2, a vehicle so fuel-thirsty that GM took advantage of a federal loophole that allowed the company not to publish its estimated mileage. Today, the No. 1 U.S. auto maker by sales, usually the most conservative of Detroit’s Big Three, has assigned hundreds of [...]