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ESG News Review 7 – 13 September 2013

Yahoo! was the most praised company last week, as it published a first aggregate summary of U.S. governmental information requests. Together with Google, Microsoft and Facebook, the company filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government for the right to reveal the numbers of national security-related requests they receive. Nissan also received mostly positive reviews as it is in the final development phase of its second mass production zero emission vehicle.

In other news, Shell was the most criticized company last week as it faced compensation demands from communities in Nigeria following oil spills that started in 2008. The same company was also fined $1.1 million by the US Environmental Protection Agency for violations of air pollution limits during offshore oil drilling operations in the Arctic Ocean. Another court rejected Google’s appeal against a lawsuit that accused it of violating US federal wiretap law when it collected Wi-Fi network data for its Street View program.

The most praised companies last week were: Yahoo! Inc., Nissan Motor Co. Ltd., Microsoft Corporation, Hyundai Motor Co., and Diageo plc.

And the most criticized were: Royal Dutch Shell plc, Tokyo Electric Power Co. Inc., Google Inc., BP plc, GlaxoSmithKline plc.

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

ESG News Review 7 - 13 September 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 7 - 13 September 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 7 - 13 September 2013

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

In terms of volume of information USA, Japan, France, Germany, UK, Niger, Nigeria and Spain.


Last week statistics

Positives 1069 Companies 301 Countries 51
Negatives 979 Mostly praised 186 Sources 384
Total 2048 Mostly criticized 107
Positives / Total 52%

These figures show the activity in Covalence EthicalQuote database during the week of 6 – 13 September 2013.

Historical statistics

ESG News Review 7 - 13 September 2013
Positives 341384
Negatives 196473
Total 537857
Sources 35156
Start 01.01.2002
End 13.09.2013

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