ESG News Review 1 — 7 March 2014

Ecolab appeared among the most praised companies last week after it received a 2014 Climate Leadership Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for achieving aggressive greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals. Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) announced they have spent $2.3 billion in 2013 with diverse suppliers, such as minority-owned or women-owned businesses. Volkswagen said its investments in eco-friendly vehicles rose by 15 percent to EUR 10.2 billion in 2013, and that it aims to become the world’s leading automaker in ecological terms by 2018. Saint-Gobain Glass has become the first glass manufacturer in the UK to be awarded the BES 6001 accreditation “Very Good” standard for its responsible sourcing of materials. Fujitsu will more than double its graduate workforce intake for 2014, which should contribute to tackle youth unemployment in the UK and Ireland.

Citigroup was among the most criticized companies last week as it faces a probe by a U.S. federal grand jury over alleged money-laundering involving its Mexican subsidiary, Banamex. A US appeals court has rejected BP‘s call to prevent businesses from requesting financial reparations for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Duke Energy has been cited by North Carolina regulators for environmental violations in a probe prompted by a massive spill at one facility that dumped tons of coal ash into the Dan River.  India’s defense ministry ordered a bribery investigation over state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited’s purchase of jet engines from Rolls-Royce. Roche is accused by Italian anti-trust authorities to have colluded with Novartis to prevent the distribution of Roche’s cancer drug Avastin in favor of the more expensive drug Lucentis commercialized by Novartis; both companies denied these allegations.

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, UK, Spain, Germany, China, Canada, Mexico, and Indonesia were the major countries of action last week.

Last week statistics

These figures show the activity in Covalence EthicalQuote database during the week of 1-7 March February 2014.

Historical statistics

Positives	357561
Negatives	216855
Total	574416
Sources	37893
Start	01.01.2002
End	07.03.2014

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