CSRHub Blog Research on ESG metrics and comments on sustainability best practice

Say yes! Turning ‘we don’t report’ into ‘we do’

Why more U.S. companies are publicly reporting on their environmental performance and what you can do to stay ahead of the trend.

Webinar: April 10, 2013
11am – 12 noon EST

“It used to be that only firms at the leading edge of sustainable business released environmental reports, but by 2012 a third of American firms had begun disclosing these facets of their operations, along with nearly 40 percent of companies globally.” State of Green Business 2013

The link between financial performance and sustainability reporting is growing ever stronger; companies that disclose their performance frequently outperform those which don’t. A rapidly growing number of companies are reporting on their sustainability efforts, if you are a business which doesn’t disclose you will soon be in the minority amongst your peers.

If you are thinking about preparing a sustainability report, this briefing will help jumpstart your efforts by explaining key issues you should consider, things not to do when reporting, and important benchmarking tactics. This webinar is especially aimed at medium and smaller sized enterprises that are looking to build internal capacity for preparing sustainability reports.

Click here now to sign up

Agenda

11:00        The State of Sustainability Reporting

Bahar Gidwani: CEO and Co-Founder, CSRHub

• Who is reporting and why?
• Overview of key reporting frameworks

11:10        Sustainability Reporting Success Strategies

Lorinda Rowledge: Co-founder, EKOS International

• Trust & Transparency
• Trends
• Essential elements to consider in preparing your first sustainability report
• Lessons learned and tips for success

11:30        Benchmarking:  Find your focus and unlock best practices

James Salo, PhD.  Sr. Vice President Research, North America

• Why benchmark and what can you learn by doing it?
• Fast, cost effective approaches and case study examples

11:45        Discussion, Audience Q & A

12:00        Close          

About the Speakers:

Bahar Gidwani, CFA.  Bahar co-founded CSRHub in 2007.  Its goal is to increase access to corporate sustainability information.  He has built and run large technology-based businesses and has experience building a multi-million visitor Web site.  He worked on Wall Street with Kidder, Peabody, and with McKinsey & Co. Bahar holds both a CFA and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Lorinda Rowledge, Ph.D.  From a foundation of expertise in world-class management systems and lean production, Lorinda has focused for the last 15 years on helping companies use Sustainability/Corporate Social Responsibility as a key platform for business advantage, innovation, and positive impact in the world.  She partners deeply with executives, mid-managers, and cross-functional teams to design and implement strategy-driven programs that achieve performance breakthroughs and innovative solutions.  Lorinda co-leads EKOS Sustainability Reporting services, helping companies engage with stakeholders and communicate the story of their CSR impact and progress.

James Salo, Ph.D.  James is the senior member responsible for Trucost's research efforts in North America and coordinates Trucost's Advisory Panel. James has been the research lead for Newsweek's Green Rankings and many of Trucost’s environmental performance benchmarking projects.   James will review why companies benchmark and what value and insights companies gain from benchmarking their performance.

CSRHub provides access to corporate social responsibility and sustainability ratings and information on 7,000+ companies from 135 industries in 91 countries. Managers, researchers and activists use CSRHub to benchmark company performance, learn how stakeholders evaluate company CSR practices and seek ways to change the world. 

 By Bahar Gidwani

As a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) and past denizen of Wall Street, I am always interested to see studies that relate data or trends to the performance of a group of stocks.  The SRI (Socially Responsible Investment) industry has been producing some interesting work in this area, recently.

For instance, our data was used as part of a study by Governance & Accountability on the relationship between sustainability and stock performance for the S&P 500.  Our friends at GovernanceMetrics put out a study that showed a connection between the Accounting and Governance Risk (AGR) data and default in the CDS market (11 times more likely for companies in the bottom decile vs the top decile).  And, our friends at Trucost have just released an extensive report on the State of Green Business (co-produced with GreenBiz).

Now MSCI’s research group has published a fascinating study that inspects three commonly-used strategies for integrating ESG (Environment, Social, and Governance) factors into portfolio management:

• “ESG exclusion” describes a process that strips out “bad” stocks and overweights a portfolio with the top rated companies among the “good” stocks.
• “Simple ESG tilt” underweights “bad” stocks and overweights “good” stocks.
• “ESG Momentum” focuses on stocks that are showing changes in their sustainability performance.  It overweights companies that are improving and underweights those that are lagging behind.

If you want to see the details of MSCI’s analysis of these strategies, you should download their report.  I was surprised to learn that the momentum strategy dominated the other two over the four year horizon of the study.  It was also reassuring to see that all three ESG strategies produced active return benefits.

MSCI will host a webinar on March 21, where they will discuss their results.  You can register for it, here.  Please send me other interesting ideas in this area, and help me stay up to date on the latest development in SRI and ESG.

Bahar Gidwani is a Cofounder and CEO of CSRHub. Formerly, he was the CEO of New York-based Index Stock Imagery, Inc, from 1991 through its sale in 2006. He has built and run large technology-based businesses and has experience building a multi-million visitor Web site. Bahar holds a CFA, was a partner at Kidder, Peabody & Co., and worked at McKinsey & Co. Bahar has consulted to both large companies such as Citibank, GE, and Acxiom and a number of smaller software and Web-based companies. He has an MBA (Baker Scholar) from Harvard Business School and a BS in Astronomy and Physics (magna cum laude) from Amherst College. Bahar races sailboats, plays competitive bridge, and is based in New York City.

CSRHub provides access to corporate social responsibility and sustainability ratings and information on nearly 7,000 companies from 135 industries in 82 countries. Managers, researchers and activists use CSRHub to benchmark company performance, learn how stakeholders evaluate company CSR practices and seek ways to change the world.