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ESG News Review 10 — 16 May 2014

Dell appeared among the most praised companies last week, as several sources including The Guardian’s Sustainability case studies highlighted its objectives for 2020, including waste-free packaging, reducing its operational carbon footprint by 50% and cutting the energy intensity of its product portfolio by 80%. NiSource released its 2013 Sustainability Report, showing the company’s progress across five key  dimensions, including the environment, communities, customers, employees and shareholders. Toyota announced it will spend $27 million at its Cambridge assembly plant (Canada) to cut energy costs and reduce demand on the local and provincial power grids. Daikin Industries and Conservation International (CI) announced an expansion of their partnership on forest conservation and environmental education activities to foster sustainable livelihoods on a global scale. Wyndham Worldwide, one of the world’s largest hospitality companies, announced it achieved a 12 percent energy reduction of its North American location.

Google was among the most criticized companies last week, as it is accused of compiling customers’ data without asking for their consent by the data protection office for the German state of Hamburg. Credit Suisse is currently negociating with the U.S. authorities to settle a probe by the Justice Department into whether it helped thousands of Americans evade U.S.taxes. BNP Paribas is also under investigation for alleged processing of transactions with countries such as Sudan and Iran that are on U.S. sanctions lists. Trade unions fear that Bouygues Telecom will cut between 1500 and 2000 jobs, according to French newspaper Le Figaro. Chinese police accused an executive of GlaxoSmithKline of operating a “massive bribery network,” a scheme to bribe doctors and hospitals to use its drugs.

ESG News Review 10 — 16 May 2014

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.

ESG News Review 10 — 16 May 2014

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 10 — 16 May 2014

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

In terms of volume of information USA, UK, France, China, South Africa, Spain, Australia, Germany, Colombia, and India were the main countries of action.

Last week statistics

Positives 855 Companies named 324 Countries 76
Negatives 1238 Mostly praised 177 Sources 245
Total 2093 Mostly criticized 132
Positives / Total 41%

These figures show the activity in Covalence EthicalQuote database during the week of 10 – 16 May 2014.

Historical statistics

ESG News Review 10 — 16 May 2014
Positives 369086
Negatives 230592
Total 599678
Sources 39376
Start 01.01.2002
End 16.05.2014

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