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Excellence in Corporate Citizenship on Display in the Coronavirus Crisis – #4

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by Hank Boerner – Chair & Chief Strategist – G&A Institute and the G&A team — continuing a new conversation about the corporate and investor response the coronavirus crisis…continuing the second week of the conversation… Post #4 – Late Evening,  March 23 … second of the day

 

 

 

Introduction
These are the times when actions and reactions to crisis helps to define the character of the corporation and shape the public profiles of each of the corporate citizens. For companies, these are not easy times.

Many important decisions are to be made, many priorities set in an environment of unknown unknowns — there are many stakeholders with needs to be taken care of.

The good news: Corporations are not waiting to be part of the solution – decisions are being made quickly and action is being taken to protect the enterprise. This is no easy task while protecting the corporate brand, the reputation for being a good corporate citizen, watching out for the investor base and the employee base — and all stakeholders.

What are companies doing? How will the decisions made at the top in turn affect the company’s employees, customers, hometowns, suppliers, other stakeholders?    Stay tuned.

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Getting Pharmaceuticals to Those in Need

The giant global pharma company Novartis commits to donate up to 130 million doses by end of May of generic hydroxychloroquine (a compound) – this and chloroquine are being evaluated to treat COVID-19. In New York State, tomorrow trials will begin for the use of the two drugs.

Novartis Sandoz division is pursuing regulatory approvals and once that is in hand the managers will work with stakeholders to figure out how to get the drugs to patients. (Novartis has registration for hydroxychloroquine in the USA.)

This is part of the Novartis COVID-19 Response Fund (US$20 million) effort for drug discovery, development, collaboration and price stability. Novartis will work with other companies to support global supply.

The Novartis enterprise resulted from the merger of Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy.

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Bayer AG (Germany) is partnering with the federal government to get several millions of anti-malaria drugs – millions of tables of chloroquine (on label: Resochin® – made of chloroquine phosphate) to the U.S. – the other half of the experimental treatment. President Donald Trump called on regulatore to agree on an emergency-use authorization.

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Funding — Cash Really Helps to Bring Aid to the Nation

Morgan Stanley committing $10 million in cash to support children’s wellbeing and capacity-building for first responders. The first distribution is for Feeding America, the CDC Foundation and the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Solidarity Health Fund.

The CDC Foundation will use the fund to support local and state health departments, the global response, logistics, communications, data management, PPEs, and supplies. These funds are in addition to $500,000 in employee matching to charities supporting the initial outbreak in Wuhan, China.

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Keeping the Power on and Communities’ Needs Met

Alliant Energy, the utility serving Iowa and Wisconsin in the Heartland, donated $100,000 to COVID-19 relief efforts through its foundation arm. CEO John Larsen said the firm worked with non-profit partners to identify local needs – and cash was at the top of the list.

Contributions are headed to non-profits in the two states – to six food banks to be divided between Iowa and Wisconsin (for food boxes, mobile drive-through pantry support, gaps in school lunch programs. And the American Red Cross chapters in each state will receive funds. When the employees and retirees donate to local relief efforts, the Alliant Energy Foundation will match gifts up to $3,500 this year.

The company activated its comprehensive pandemic emergency plan and instituted safety work practices to protect employees. And yes, “Powering What’s Next” is the title of the 2019 Corporate Responsibility Report – you can see it here: https://sustainability.alliantenergy.com/

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Driving Folks Around in a Lyft During the Crisis

The drive-sharing service Lyft’s co-founders (John and Logan) sent customers an email. “All of us feel the weight of our responsibility to the community right now.” To drivers (who need the cash) and to customers, to be their critical lifeline, especially those in need.

And so to support drivers and maximize community impact:

  • Supporting delivery of medical supplies and providing access to necessary transport, especially for low-income individuals.
  • Activating LyftUp to donate tens of thousands of dollars to families and children, low-income seniors, doctors and nurses.
  • Teaming with United Way, World Central Kitchen and Team Rubicon.
  • Riders and drivers encouraged to stay home if they are sick – and work with medical professionals to discuss transportation options.

Coming all together to help:

Governments, not-for-profits, healthcare entities are asked to get in touch with Lyft to discuss how the company can help – form to reply is here. 

Foundations and philanthropic organizations looking to help can connect via email: LyftUpCovid19Funding@lyft.com.

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The Buzz is All About E-Learning – What Do People Need?

In Houston, Texas, school children are at home (and so are their teachers), and “e-learning” or tele-learning is the alternative method of keeping the school year going. Harris County Sheriff’s Office and CITGO Petroleum Corporation are donating 150 tablets (Kindles) to the Houston and Alief Independent School Districts to support low-income students’ e-learning needs during the crisis.

CITGO has had a six-year partnership with the sheriff’s office in offering the “Kindling Young Minds Program” to provide Kindle Fire tables to Houston-area students with perfect or much-improved attendance records – that program is modified now to meet crisis conditions.

The tablets were in student’s hands by March 19th. (More than 600 tablets are now in use.) As they say, life hands you a lemon – go make buckets of lemonade!)

CITGO operates three refineries in Texas, Louisiana and Illinois; wholly or jointly owns 48 terminals, 9 pipelines and other businesses and is #5 refiner in the U.S. The familiar brand is in 30 states. Old timers remember the original brand – Cities Service.

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Along these lines, Discovery Education is helping homebound students (and parents & guardians) by launching “Daily DE” – digital curriculum resources, engaging content and professional learning for K-12 classroom. This is a suite of free activities and resources for students and their families.

There are partners in the offering: Afterschool Alliance, American Heart Association, the NFL, US Shoah Foundation, Tiger Woods Foundation, Siemens, 3M, TCS, and others. You can find out more at: https://www.discoveryeducation.com/

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Putting Food on the Table — Addressing the Anxieties of Families

Families and individuals are in need of food during the crisis and Albertsons Companies and Albertsons Foundation pledge funds and launch a major fundraising drive to “fight hunger” during the crisis.

This is a call to action; CEO Vivek Sankaran explains that Albertsons Companies are on the front line of hunger relief and calls on communities to assist. The “Nourishing Neighbors” program (especially focused on breakfast for kids) needs help to feed families now.

Contributions are solicited for food banks, emergency meal distribution at schools, senior center meals, and family access to federal food programs.

There’s information at: AlbertsonsCompaniesFoundation.org.

Hey shoppers – you, too, can chip in at branded retail outlets as they stock up for their own families – look for information at Albertsons, Safeway, Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s, Star Market, Tom Thumb, Randal’s, ACME, and other of the company’s retail food outlets.

Internally, Albertsons employees are helping each other with donations to the “We Care Fund”, part of the foundation activiti4es.

In 2019, Albertsons Companies and the foundation donated $225 million in food and financial support to communities, for education, hunger relief, cancer research and treatment, veterans outreach, and for people with disabilities. To that list the company and foundation added COVID-19 relief.

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Getting Money and Help to the People Who Need it

Fifth Third Bank Bancorp (Cincinnati) and the Fifth Third Foundation and the Fifth Third Chicagoland Foundation will direct $8.75 million in funds to support community members.

“Recovery and Resilience Funds” will direct funds through “Strengthening Our Communities” grants of the foundation to support small businesses, affordable housing and homeownership, and economic development. Relief funds are directed for COVID-19 response in areas served by Fifth Third Bank.

The institution is also offering a vehicle payment waiver program; consumer credit card payment waiver; mortgage and home equity program for late payments (with no late fees); small business payment waiver (up to six months for loans); suspension of vehicle repossession actions; suspension of foreclosures. Many of these are for at least 60 and 90 days duration.

Banking units serve Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Florida, Tennessee, W Virginia, Georgia, and North Carolina. The federal bank had $169 billion in assets and 1149 full service banking centers. Money management: Fifth Third is among the largest institutions in the Midwest with $413 billion in assets under care.

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And More Funds for Small Businesses

Facebook launched a $100 million grant program for small businesses that are being impacted by the pandemic – most of the disbursements will be in cash payments, with some credits for business services.

“We’ve listened to small businesses to understand how best we can help them,” explains Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. Being helped: 30,000 small business enterprises in 30+ nations where Facebook employees live and work.

Facebook’s estimate is that as many as 140 million businesses use the apps each month to help in management and market of the firm as some 200 million people visit an Instagram Business Profile every day.

According to Forbes writer Maneet Ahuja, such firms as Unashamed Imaging (principal, Anesha Collins), a Florida-based wedding photographers is using Facebook Live and IGTV to keep in touch clients; Heavenly Soap (principal Patti Gibbons) pushes ahead using Facebook. These are the types of firms considered for the program.

Last week Facebook launched Business Hub, with resources for small businesses. Info: https://www.facebook.com/business/boost/resource?ref=alias

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Close to home for some of us on the G&A Institute team who live in suburban Nassau or Suffolk counties, PSEG Long Island and the PSEG Foundation are lending support to the leading food bank in the area – Island Harvest.

The company and its foundation are supporting the Island Harvest Food Bank with a grant of $45,000 to address rising food insecurity – including helping local children without access to school food programs because their schools are closed.

Island Harvest relies on donations of surplus food by commercial establishments, wholesalers, supermarkets, individuals. Each day, surplus bread and other commodities have been donated by local Panera Bread markets, for example.

The electric utility’s regional territory includes the populous Nassau and Suffolk counties (almost 3.5 million population. CEO Daniel Eichorn points out that many of the company’s employees volunteer to help Island Harvest each year and the funds will help as part of the ongoing partnership with the food pantry.

PSEG Long Island is a subsidiary of the New Jersey-based Public Service Enterprise Group Inc, a diversified energy company.

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G&A Institute team note: We continue to bring you news of private (corporate and business), public and social sector developments as organizations in the three societal sectors adjust to the emergency.

The new items will be posted at the top of the blog post and the items today will move down the queue.

We created the tag “Corporate Purpose – Virus Crisis” for this continuing series – and the hashtag “#WeRise2FightCOVID-19“ for our Twitter posts.  Join the conversation and contribute your views and news — email info@ga-institute.com. 

The DJSI – Analytical Game Changer in 1999 – Sustainable Investing Pacesetter in 2014

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by Hank Boerner – Chairman – Chief Strategist, G&A Institute

updated with information provided to me by RobecoSAM for clarification on 17 September 2014.

It was 15 years ago (1999) that an important — and game-changing  “sustainability investing” resource came in a big way to the global capital markets; that year, S&P Dow Jones Indices and Robeco SAM teamed to create the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices. This is described by the managers as “…the first global index to track the financial performance of the leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide,” based on analysis of financially material economic, environmental and social (societal) factors. Breakthrough, game-changing stuff, no?

Note “financially material” – not “intangible” or “non-financial,” as some capital market holdouts initially (and continue to) described the sustainable investing approach.  There were but handfuls of “sustainability-driven” companies in world capital markets for selection for the World benchmark.  1999 — -that year the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) was assembling its first comprehensive framework for corporate reporting (G#) byond the numbers alone.  Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) was a steadily maturing organization mounting proxy campaigns to challenge the risky behavior of major companies that were polluting the Earth.  The Investor Responsibility Research Center (IRRC) was the go-to source for information on corporate behaviors, particularly related to corporate governance issues.  (And CG issues were rapidly expanding – the governance misbehaviors of unsustainable companies such as of Enron, WorldCom, et al, were not yet as evident as when they collapsed three years later.). Robert Monks and Nell Minow were active in Hermes Lens Asset Management, continuing to target poorly managed companies and encouraging laggard CEOs to move on. (Monks’s book, “The Emperor’s Nightingale,” was just out that year.)

Over the next 15 years, the managers of DJSI benchmarks steadily expanded their analysis and company-picking; the complex now offers choices beyond “World” —  of Dow Jones Sustainability Asia Pacific; Australia; Emerging Markets; Europe; Korea; and North America.

A handful of “sustainability-driven” companies have been aboard “World” for all of the 15 years; this is the honors list for some investors:  Baxter International (USA); Bayer AG; BMW; BT Group PLC; Credit Suisse Group; Deutsche Bank AG; Diageo PLC; Intel (USA); Novo Nordisk; RWE AG; SAP AG; Siemens AG: Storebrand; Unilever; United Health Group (USA).  Updated:  And Sainsbury’s PLC.

Though the DJSI indices have been availble to investors for a decade-and-a-half, it is only in the past few years that we hear more and more from corporate managers that senior executives are paying much closer attention.  “The CEO wants to be in the DJSI,” we frequently hear now.

Each year about this time the DJSI managers select new issues for inclusion and drop some existing component companies.  Selected to be in the World:  Amgen; Commonwealth Bank of Australia; GlaxoSmithKline PLC.  Out of the DJSI World:  Bank of America Corp; General Electric Co; Schlumberger Ltd.

DJSI managers follow a “best-in-lcass” approach, looking closely at companies in all industries that outperform their peers in a growing number of sustainability metrics.  There are about 3,000 companies invited to respond to RobecoSAM’s “Corporate Sustainability Assessment” — effective response can require a considerable commitment of time and resources by participating companies to be considered.  Especially if the enterprise is not yet “sustainability-driven.”  We’ve helped companies to better understand and respond to the DJSI queries; it’s a great exercise for corporate managers to better understand what DJSI managers consider to be “financially material.”  And to help make the case to their senior executives (especially those wanting to be in the DJSI).

updated information:  RobecoSAM invites about 2,500 companies in the S&P Global Broad Market Index to participate in the assessment process; these are enterprises in 59 industries as categorized by RobecoSAM, located in 47 countries.

The new G$ framework from GRI, which many companies in the USA, EU and other markets use for their corporate disclosure and reporting, stresses the importance of materiality — it’s at the heart of the enhanced guidelines.  The head of indices for RobecoSAM (Switzerland), Guido Giese, observes:  “Since 1999, we’ve heled investors realize the financial materiality of sustainability and companies continue to tell us that the DJSI provides an excellent tool to measure the effectiveness of their sustainability strategies.”

Sustainability strategies — “strategy” comes down to us through the ages from the Ancient Greek; “stratagem”…the work of generals…the work of the leader…generalship…”  Where top leadership (and board) is involved, the difference (among investment and industry peers) is often quite clear.

At the S&P Dow Jones  Index Committee in the USA, David Blitzer, managing director and chair of the committee, said about the 15 years of indices work: “Both the importance and the understanding of sustainability has grown dramatically over the past decade-and-a-half…the DJSI have been established as the leading benchmark in the field…:”

The best-in-class among the “sustainability-driven” companies that we see in our close monitoring as GRI’s exclusive Data Partner in the USA, UK and Ireland, the company’s senior leadership is involved, committed and actively guiding the company’s sustainability journey.  And that may be among the top contributions to sustainable investing of DJSI managers over these 15 years.

Congratulations and Happy Anniversary to RobecoSAM and S&P Dow Jones Indices (a unit of McGraw Hill Financial).  Well done!  You continue to set the pace for investors and corporates in sustainable investing.