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ESG News Review 14 — 20 June 2014

Walmart was among the most praised companies last week as it announced it will triple its spending on food safety in China to 300 million yuan; in addition, the company has been named in a Ceres report showing how firms also including Coca-Cola, General Mills, and Unilever have taken steps to work with suppliers on environmental improvements. Starbucks will offer thousands of its employees free tuition through a collaborative endeavor with Arizona State University, the company announced. Caixa d’Estalvis i Pensions de Barcelona signed an agreement with Coexphal, an association of fruits and vegetables producers in Almeria, to promote the integration of people with special difficulties in the job market. Electricité de France will be encouraged to diversify its energy sources and to favor renewables, according to the French Government’s energetic transition law project. Cisco announced the Cisco Canada Innovation Program, a strategy to invest $150 million (CAD$) to support and accelerate innovation in Canada.

Société Nationale des Chemins de fer Franà§ais appeared among the most criticized companies last week, as it is entering a second week of strike called by the CGT trade union which disapproves changes to the railway system planned by the French Governement. Citigroup and Bank of America are facing the risk of being sued by the U.S. Justice Department and to pay several billion of US$ to settle probes into the banks’ sales of mortgage-backed bonds, according to Bloomberg. General Motors’s CEO Mary Barra had to face a U.S. Congress hearing to explain what steps the company is taking to resolve a safety crisis that forced it to recall 20 million vehicles and also what it is doing to compensate for deaths and injuries related to faulty ignition switches. Britain’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is pursuing its investigation of alleged corruption at Alstom for alleged overseas bribery (Financial Times).

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

ESG News Review 14 — 20 June 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 14 — 20 June 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 14 — 20 June 2014

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

In terms of volume of information USA, France, China, Spain, Germany, UK, Ireland, Mexico, and Canada were the main countries of action.

Last week statistics

Positives 1745 Companies named 397 Countries 87
Negatives 1813 Mostly praised 214 Sources 386
Total 3558 Mostly criticized 167    
Positives / Total 49%        

These figures show the activity in Covalence EthicalQuote database during the week of 14 – 20 June 2014.

Historical statistics

  ESG News Review 14 — 20 June 2014
Positives 375579
Negatives 239010
Total 614589
Sources 39987
Start 01.01.2002
End 20.06.2014
   

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