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ESG News Review 13 — 20 July 2013

GlaxoSmithKline continued to be the most criticized company last week, as Chinese officials pursued their investigation into the suspected “economic crimes” of executives, including bribery. This affair occupies a large portion of the summer media space.

On the other hand, Microsoft was the most praised company for calling on President Obama and the U.S. Congress to provide greater transparency on official surveillance programs. This move was also backed by Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and other technology companies. The week before Microsoft had appeared among the 5 most criticized companies, for alleged collaboration with the  National Security Agency. This story reflects the delicate balance of interests that companies have to handle between institutional requirements and the management of their reputation.

The most praised companies last week were: Microsoft Corporation, Yahoo! Inc., Wells Fargo & Company, Siemens AG, General Motors.

And the most criticized were: GlaxoSmithKline plc, Barclays plc, Chevron Corp., Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Franà§ais, Boeing Co.

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

ESG News Review 13 — 20 July 2013

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 groups, following the structure of the GRI. The color indicates the ratio of positive news / total news.

ESG News Review 13 — 20 July 2013

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

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.

ESG News Review 13 — 20 July 2013

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

In terms of volume of information USA, France, China, UK, Spain, Argentina, and Germany were the major countries of action last week.


Last week statistics

Positives 2309 Companies 408 Countries 82
Negatives 2063 Mostly praised 261 Sources 721
Total 4372 Mostly criticized 138
Positives / Total 53%

These figures show the activity in Covalence EthicalQuote database during the week of 13 – 20 July 2013.

Historical statistics

HistoryChartRatio_130708
Positives 333801
Negatives 189384
Total 527385
Sources 34698
Start 01.01.2002
End 20.07.2013

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