Franck Riboud is a romantic at heart. The chairman of French food multinational Danone is also an astute businessman with a particular nose for marketing. Yet he seems to be managing to combine his passionate commitment for social responsibility with the more humdrum prerogatives of business and maximising profits. His latest plan is to launch [...]

ABN Amro has launched an equity index tracking firms that address climate change and other environmental issues. Paul Thind, a London-based executive director at ABN AMRO, and the index developer, said: “This… benchmark reference instrument can be used both to invest in the growth potential of the market addressing climate change and also effectively manage [...]

When many students stop by Starbucks on the way to class to pick up their daily double shots, they may not realize the signs they see around the store for different types of coffees are the focus of a rift between the coffee giant and the farmers in developing countries who grow its coffee on [...]

UBS AG today announced that it has launched the KLD Dividend Achievers Social Investing Series 2007A, a unique unit investment trust (“UIT”) designed to meet the needs of UBS Wealth Management US clients who are seeking socially responsible investments with a track record of increasing dividends. The UIT, part of the UBS Equity Opportunity Trust, [...]

New treatments for malaria were developed in response to a resurgence of the disease in the 1990s.

Dear Covalence team, I am part of a Swiss-based working group that gathers and spreads information about various problems that challenge the civil population in Colombia. At the moment, I am working on a case involving a the largest open-pit coal mine in the world, Carbones del Cerrejón, situated in the North of Colombia, [...]

Oil company BP operated an unsafe culture at a Texas refinery where 15 died in an explosion and management should have spotted the warning signs years ago, according to a damning report being published today.The US Chemical Safety Board (CSB), which spent two years investigating the blast in March 2005, says that cost-cutting at the [...]

The Swiss firm has contacted all 785 members of the European Parliament over the past few weeks, urging them not to sign a written declaration opposing the Novartis stance on India’s 2005 patents law. Novartis is taking legal action against the law, which provides for patents on medicines to be refused on public health grounds. [...]

Leading humanitarian health care agency, International Aid, today announced a major safe water initiative that will help address the growing health crisis caused by lack of access to clean water in developing countries worldwide. As the centerpiece of its safe water program, the agency introduced a new, lightweight water filter that combines proven filtration technology, [...]

THE ROYAL Bank of Scotland (RBS) is being threatened with a student boycott over its multi-billion-pound investments in climate-wrecking oil and gas projects around the world. The threat comes in the wake of a new report attacking RBS’s record on funding polluting pipelines and production plants. The bank has been accused of going on a [...]