ESG News Review 28 September – 4 October 2013

Last week the most criticized company was Tokyo Electric Power Co. Inc., as contaminated water continue leaking at Fukushima nuclear plant. Ryanair also received negative comments for being ordered by a French court to pay more than €9m in fines and damages for breaching labour laws in Marseille. BP has been accused of withholding information about how much oil was spilling into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, as the second phase of the trial started. Google is still in trouble with U.S. and French authorities over email privacy. Finally, Siemens has been criticized after it announced a plan to reduce 15,000 jobs worldwide.

On the positive side, Solvay was the most praised company last week as it plans to build South-East Asia’s largest sodium bicarbonate plant relying on new generation production technology which minimizes waste generation and optimizes energy recovery. Technip and Shell Cansolv have signed an agreement to leverage their respective expertise in marketing an end-to-end solution for Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) projects. Bombardier announced the construction of a new factory in Morocco which will create 800 direct and 4000 indirect jobs in the region. Vodafone Spain’s Sustainability Report also highlighted creation of jobs and local economic impacts.

The most praised companies last week were: Solvay SA, Royal Dutch Shell plc, Technip, Bombardier, and Vodafone Group plc.

And the most criticized were: Tokyo Electric Power Co. Inc., Ryanair Holdings plc, BP plc, Google Inc., Siemens AG.

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

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.

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

Ratio of positive news / total news 0 % 100 %

In terms of volume of information USA, France, Japan, Spain, Germany, Mexico, and Canada.

Last week statistics

These figures show the activity in Covalence EthicalQuote database during the week of 28 September – 4 October  2013.

Historical statistics

Positives	342806
Negatives	197734
Total	540540
Sources	35567
Start	01.01.2002
End	04.10.2013

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