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ESG News Review 15-21 June 2013

Ford has been praised for cutting production emissions by 37% per vehicle since 2000, while HSBC (and Standard Chartered) officers have been caught in a Cobrapost sting operation, offering to launder money.

This weekly review is 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 Environment, Social, Governance (ESG), Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), ethics and sustainability.

Last week 382 companies have been named in 2773 news pieces gathered by Covalence. 240 companies had more positive than negative news, while 130 registered a majority of negatives, and 12 were balanced.

The most praised companies last week were: Ford Motor Co., AT&T Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Nike Inc., and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd..

And the most criticized were: HSBC Holdings plc, Tokyo Electric Power Co. Inc., Bank of America Corporation, Finmeccanica SpA, and BP plc.

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

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

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

Ratio of positive news / total news for 50 criteria last week 0 % countryofactionBAR130610_70 100 %

Last week four criteria groups have shown a negative balance: Human Rights (Security Practices, Human Rights Policy), Labor (Employment, Trade Unions, Health & Safety), Society (Social Compliance, Corruption, Competition), and Product (Customer Privacy, Product Compliance, and Product Safety).

On the other hand, Governance (Commitments to External Initiatives, Stakeholder Engagement), Economic (Social Sponsorship), and Environment (Energy, Emissions, Environmental Impacts of Products) all registered majorities of positives.

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 data.

Ratio of positive news / total news

Ratio of positive news / total news 0 % countryofactionBAR130610_70 100 %

In terms of volume of information USA, UK, Japan, France, Canada, India, Australia, and Mexico were the major countries of action last week.


Last week statistics

Positives 1536 Companies 382 Countries 62
Negatives 1237 Mostly praised 240 Sources 514
Total 2773 Mostly criticized 130
Positives / Total 55%

These figures show the activity in Covalence EthicalQuote database during the week of 15-21 June 2013.

Historical statistics

HistoryChartRatio_130624
Positives 329695
Negatives 182285
Total 511980
Sources 34348
Start 01.01.2002
End 21.06.2013

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