ESG News Review 22 — 28 February 2014

General Electric belongs to the group of most praised companies last week as it announced a $10 billion investment in clean technology as part of its “ecomagination” initiative, according to Reuters. Ericsson has been recognized for “Connecting the Unconnected” by Telecoms.com in their 2014 Industry Awards for the company’s involvement in the Millennium Villages Project and Connect to Learn initiative. Nissan signed a partnership agreement with the kingdom of Bhutan to develop a network allowing a large use of electric vehicles. Philips has published an integrated annual report showing solid progress in its EcoVision program which sets sustainability performance targets for the end of 2015, beating green sales target two years ahead of schedule. Banco Santander said that 70’000 students and 10’000 small and medium enterprises will participate in the third edition of the Santander Universities SME Internship Programme.

Credit Suisse appeared among the most criticized companies last week after a U.S. Senate investigation found that it helped 22,000 US clients totalling US$10 billion practice tax evasion. UBS is said to prepare itself to pay as much as 200 million euros to settle a probe into whether it helped Germans evade taxes, according to the Sà¼ddeutsche Zeitung. Duke Energy may be forced by State regulators in North Carolina to move thousands of tons of coal ash from storage ponds at a power plant to a lined landfill after a spill contaminated the Dan River.  Royal Bank of Scotland has been criticized after announcing a £500m bonus plan. Bank of America is facing a new probe related to its mortgage lending practices in the pre-crisis period.

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 dimensions, 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, Spain, Germany, UK, Canada, Switzerland, Brazil, Australia, Japan, Belgium, China, and India were the major countries of action last week.

Last week statistics

These figures show the activity in Covalence EthicalQuote database during the week of 22-28 February 2014.

Historical statistics

Positives	356020
Negatives	214769
Total	570789
Sources	37704
Start	01.01.2002
End	28.02.2014

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