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ESG News Review 22-28 June 2013

Microsoft has been praised for expressing its willingness to disclose US government data queries and for launching ad-free Bing search for schools last week, while UBS received negative coverage as its French unit was fined 10m euros for failing to tighten proper controls on money-laundering and tax evasion.

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.

Last week 368 companies were mentioned in 2570 news pieces gathered by our team. 254 companies had more positive than negative news, while 103 registered a majority of negatives, and 11 were balanced.

The most praised companies last week were: Microsoft Corporation, Ford Motor Co., Volkswagen AG, The Coca-Cola Company, and International Business Machines Corp.

And the most criticized were: UBS AG, Barclays plc, BP plc, Facebook, Inc., Bank of America Corporation.

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

ESG News Review 22-28 June 2013

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 0 % countryofactionBAR130610_70 100 %

Last week two criteria groups gathered two thirds of  negative news: Society (Social Compliance, Competition, Corruption), and Product (Product Compliance, Customer Privacy, Social Impacts of Products, and Product Safety).

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

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.

countryofactionMAP130701_55Ratio of positive news / total news 0 % countryofactionBAR130610_70 100 %

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


Last week statistics

Positives 1662 Companies 368 Countries 55
Negatives 908 Mostly praised 254 Sources 486
Total 2570 Mostly criticized 103
Positives / Total 65%

These figures show the activity in Covalence EthicalQuote database during the week of 22-28 June 2013.

Historical statistics

HistoryChartRatio_130624
Positives 331357
Negatives 183193
Total 514550
Sources 34371
Start 01.01.2002
End 28.06.2013

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