About Sustainability Ratings: CPAs Are Being Educated by Their Profession’s Journal – A Good First Effort to Push Information to All Levels of CPAs

by Hank Boerner – Chair and Chief Strategist, G&A Institute

The professional CPAs working inside a public company, or in the outside accounting firm working with a company may or may not yet be involved in assisting corporate managers in responding to a growing number of third-party surveys focused on the company’s ESG strategies, actions and achievements.  Responses to these periodic surveys and engagements by other means with the ratings and rankings organizations are increasingly shaping outcomes – that is, investor opinions of the company.

Many more companies are now receiving surveys from and responding to a growing number of third-party ESG rating providers – and as we are told by our corporate connections, very often managers are straining under the effort to effectively respond given the breadth of information sought and the information available in the corporation.

As we advise corporate managers, it is important to know that there is a publicly-available ESG profile of your company that investors are considering in various ways – and either you will shape the profile and tell the company’s sustainability progress story, or someone else will.  That “someone else” would be the global universe of ESG rating providers — and their output is directed to their investor clients. The ones who invest in, or could invest in, your company.

Savvy corporate managers of course “get it” and really make the effort to effectively respond to as many queries and surveys as possible.  But what about the internal financial managers and outside accountants – are they involved?  At some firms, yes, and other firms no — or not yet.

The Big Four are tuned in to corporate ESG / sustainability disclosure and reporting.  But many smaller CPA firms are not.

And among small- and mid-cap publicly-traded firms, the role of the ratings and rankings service providers could still be an unknown and under-appreciated factor in shaping the firm’s reputation, valuation, access to and cost of capital, and other considerations. The article in the influential CPA Journal this month is a worthwhile attempt to educate professional CPAs, whatever their position.

Five professors — co-authors and colleagues at the Feliciano School of Business, Montclair State University — explored the question, “Are Sustainability Rankings Consistent Across Rating Agencies?”  One obvious element in the piece that we noticed is something happening in both the corporate sector and investment community:  the fluid interchangeability of terms of reference.

Is what is being explored by the ESG ratings and rankings service providers and their investor clients performance related to …CSR (corporate social responsibility)…ESG performance factors (environment/social/governance)…corporate sustainability…corporate citizenship…sustainable investing?  Combinations? All of these?
The authors use the terms interchangeably, as do company managers and capital markets practitioners in discussing the ever-more important role that “corporate sustainability rating providers” play in investor decision-making.

They cite the 2014 overview of rating agencies by Novethic Research (7 international rating agencies, 2 non-financial data providers, 8 specialized agencies and 20 local/regional agencies). Several studies and books are identified as reference sources.

Specific CSR rankings examined for 2015 results:  Newsweek’s Greenest Companies; Forbes Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations; and, CSR Magazine Top 100 Global RepTrak companies.

We offer the perspectives of the Journal authors in our Top Story so that you can see what CPA’s will be reading in their Journal.

There are important points raised — but the three rankings examined do not cover the full breadth of the expanding universe of ESG rating organizations.  And we are light years away from 2015 in terms of the rating agencies’ influence.

The three rankings cited are not as “investor decision-useful” as would be the analytical work of teams at such firms as MSCI, Sustainalytics, Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS); what was offered in 2015 doesn’t compare to the depth of ESG data available today via Bloomberg and T-R Eikon terminals; the RobecoSAM Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) ratings that influence inclusion in the DJSI; and, volumes of information made available by CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project).

The G&A Institute team assists corporate managers in responding to these important players and an ever-widening range of third-party ESG service providers.

We’d like to share three basic observations with you and with CPAs: (1) the third party queries are becoming more probing in the information and data sought; (2) the corporate response effort is much more organized and thorough these days; (3) the results of both of these efforts are increasingly important to, and utilized by, the institutional investment community (both asset owners and their managers).

So — the more information that CPAs have about sustainable investing and corporate ESG performance, the better equipped they’ll be to support their clients.  The article is a good start in this regard.

The journal authors are academics Betsy Lin, Silvia Romero, Agatha Jeffers, Laurence DeGaetano, and Frank Aquilino.

Top Story

Are Sustainability Rankings Consistent Across Ratings Agencies?
(Thursday – July 26, 2018) Source: CPA Journal – As more and more companies begin to devote serious attention to sustainability reporting, many different systems of rating the depth and effectiveness of sustainability efforts have arisen. The authors compare three leading…

The “100 Best Corporate Citizens 2018” Roster -– Published by CR Magazine

by Hank Boerner – Chair, G&A Institute

Now in its 19th year, the well known CR Magazine “100 Best Corporate Citizens 2018” list was just unveiled; this effort recognizes the ESG performance of public companies in the United States. (The publication is now titled Corporate Responsibility Magazine, published by 3BL Media LLC.)

Top Companies:
Microsoft
(MSFT) earned top ranking (#1), followed by Accenture, Owens Corning, Intel, and Hasbro (at #5).

The next five ranked companies are (#6) Altria Group, Cisco Systems, Ecolab, Johnson & Johnson, and NVIDIA Corp (at #10).

The biggest gainers for the year were Becton, Dickenson; IBM; Owens Corning; and Biogen.  The complete list is available in our Top Story (below).

Assembling the list does not rely on responding to a survey, publisher Dave Armon explains.  Each year the rankings measure the success of the “Brands Taking Stands” movement by celebrating the most successful, most transparent companies that report on their responsible practices. “We congratulate the company on the 2018 list for their commitment to corporate responsibility,” he said in announcing the rankings.

Methodology:
The list examines 260 data points of performance measures and disclosure, harvested from publicly-available information for every company in the Russell 1000® Index, in seven categories (environmental, climate change, employee relations, human rights, corporate governance, financial, and philanthropy & community support).  The underlying research is conducted by ISS Corporate Solutions (Institutional Shareholder Services).

The inaugural list was published in 1999 by the former Business Ethics Magazine, which segued into CR Magazine.

Coming up soon, CR Magazine in collaboration with the 3BL Association (formerly the Corporate Responsibility Association), presents the well known annual COMMIT!Forum conference, now re-branded as the 2018 3BL Forum by its new owners.

This year’s event is at MGM National Harbor near Washington DC, October 23-25; the theme is “Brands Taking Stands – The Long View”.

3BL Media LLC is the global leader in disseminating CR and sustainability content. Its brands include Triple Pundit; CSR Wire; 3BL Wire; 3BL Report Alert; Justmeans, 3BL Studio, and others. Corporate clients utilize the platforms for their sustainability, CR and related content distribution, communications and campaigns.

G&A Institute has collaborated with the 3BL Media staff and Corporate Responsibility Magazine on a long-term basis.  3BL content is carried daily on G&A’s news and opinion web-based distribution platforms.

The details for the “100 Most are in the Top Story:

Top Stories

Corporate Responsibility Magazine Announces 2018 100 Best Corporate Citizens
(Wednesday – May 09, 2018) Associated Profiles : CSRwire Source: CSR Wire — Corporate Responsibility Magazine (CR Magazine) announced today its 19th annual 100 Best Corporate Citizens list, recognizing the standout environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of…

G&A Institute Research Results: 85% of the S&P 500® Index Companies Published Sustainability / Responsibility / CR / Citizenship Reports in 2017

By Hank Boerner – Chair and Chief Strategist, G&A Institute

One of the world’s most important benchmarks for equity investors is the S&P 500 Index®, a proprietary market-value weighted “basket” of the top stocks that represent about 80% of the U.S. equity markets according to the index owner, S&P Dow Jones Indices/McGraw Hill Financial.

Market Clout:  There are about US$8 trillion in Assets Under Management benchmarked to the index  – companies included in the index have a market-cap of US$6 billion or more (ticker:SPX).

More than six years ago the G&A Institute team decided to focus on the companies in the index to determine their level of (or lack of) ESG / Sustainability / CR / Citizenship disclosure and reporting.

Our first look-see was for year 2011 corporate reporting activities and after scouring the known sources  — each of the corporate websites, IR reports, printed reports, search engines results, connecting with companies and more —  we found just about 20% or about 100 of the large-cap index 500 companies were doing “something” along the lines of what we can describe today as structured reporting.  There were numerous brochure-type publications that did not qualify as a structured report of value to investors and stakeholders.

The GRI Was a Favored Framework – Then and Now
A good number of the early reporting companies were following the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) framework for reporting guidance (that was for G3 and G3.1 at the time), and some perhaps had some other form of reporting (such as publishing key ESG performance indicators on their website or in print format for stakeholders); GRI’s G4 was later embraced by the 500.  And now we move on to the GRI Standards, which we are tracking for 2018 reporting by the 500.

This initial research effort was a good bit of work for our analyst team because many of the companies simply did not announce or publicize the availability of their sustainability et al report. (Some still do not announce, even in 2017 and 2018!)

The response to our first survey (we announced the results in spring 2012) was very encouraging and other organizations began to refer to and to help publicize the results for stakeholders.

We were pleased that among the organizations recognizing the importance of the work was the GRI; we were invited to be the data partner for the United States, and then the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.  That comprehensive work continues and is complementary to the examination of the 500.

The 2011 Research Effort – Looking Back, The Tipping Point for Sustainability Reporting

Looking back, we can see that the research results were early indications of what was going on in the corporate and investment communities, as more asset owners and managers were adopting ESG / sustainability approaches, investment policies, engagement programs — and urging more public company managements to get going on expanded disclosure beyond the usual mandated financials (the “tangibles” of that day).

Turns out that we were at an important tipping point in corporate disclosure.

Investor expectations were important considerations for C-suite and board, and there was peer pressure as well within industries and sectors, as the big bold names in Corporate America looked left and right and saw other firms moving ahead with their enhanced disclosure practices.

And there was pressure from the purchasing side – key customers were asking their corporate supply chain partners for information about their ESG policies and practices, and for reports on same.  There was an exponential effect; companies within the 500 were, in fact, asking each other for such reports on their progress!

We created a number of unique resources and tools to help guide the annual research effort.  Seeing the characteristics and best practices of sustainability reporting by America’s largest and for the most part best-known companies we constantly expanded our “Sustainability Big Data” resources and made the decision to closely track S&P 500 companies’ public reporting — and feed the rich resulting data yield into our databases and widely share top-line results (our “Flash Report”).

The following year (2013) we tracked the 500 companies’ year 2012 reporting activities – and found a very encouraging trend that rang a bell with our sustainable investing colleagues:  a bit more than half of the 500 were now publishing sustainability et al reports.  Then in 2013, the numbers increased again to 72%…then 75%…then 81%…and now for 2017, we reached the 85% level.  The dramatic rise is clearly evident in this chart:

Note that there are minor annual adjustments in the composition of the S&P 500 Index by the owners, and we account for this in our research, moving companies in and out of the research effort as needed.

Louis Coppola, EVP of G&A Institute who designs and manages the analysis, notes:  “Entering 2018, just 15% of the S&P 500 declined to publish sustainability reports. The practice of sustainability reporting by the super-majority of the 500 companies is holding steady with minor increases year after year. One of the most powerful driving forces behind the rise in reporting is an increasing demand from all categories of investors for material, relevant, comparable, accurate and actionable ESG disclosure from companies they invest in, or might consider for their portfolio.

“Mainstream investors are constantly searching for larger returns and have come to the conclusion that a company that considers their material Environmental, Social, and Governance opportunities and risks in their long-term strategies will outperform and outcompete those firms that do not. It’s just a matter now of following the money.”

Does embracing corporate sustainability in any way impact negatively on the market performance of these large companies?  Well, we should point out that the annual return for the SPX was 22% through 12-13-18.   You can read more in our Flash Report here.

Thank you to our wonderful analyst team members who over the years have participated in this exhaustive search and databasing effort.   We begin our thank you’s to Dr. Michelle Thompson, D.Env, now a postdoc fellow supporting the U.S. Department of Energy in the Office of Energy Policy Systems Analysis; and her colleague, Natalia Valencia, who is now Senior Research Analyst at LAVCA (Latin American Venture Capital Association).  Their early work was a foundational firming up of the years of research to follow.

Kudos to our G&A Research Team for their significant contributions to this year’s research report:  Team Leader Elizabeth Peterson; analyst-interns Amanda Hoster, Matthew Novak, Yangshengling “UB” Qui, Sara Rossner, Shraddha Sawant, Alan Stautz, Laura Malo Yague, and Qier “Cher” Zue.

We include here a hearty shout out to the outstanding analyst-interns who have made great contributions to these research efforts in each year since the start of the first project back in 2011-2012.  It’s wonderful working with all of these future leaders!

The reports from prior years are posted on the G&A Institute website: https://www.ga-institute.com/research-reports/research-reports-list.html

Check out our Honor Roll there for the full roster of all of the talented analysts who have worked on these reports and numerous other G&A Institute research that we broadly share with you when the results are in.  Their profiles (which we work with our valued colleagues to keep up to date as they move on to great success in their careers) are on the G&A website: https://www.ga-institute.com/about-the-institute/the-honor-roll.html

Footnote:  As we examine 1,500 corporate and institutional reports each year we see a variety of titles applied:  Corporate Sustainability; Corporate Social Responsibility; Corporate Responsibility; Corporate Citizenship (one of the older titles still used by GE and other firms); Corporate Stewardship; Environmental Sustainability…and more!

If you would like to have information about G&A Institute research efforts, please connect with us via our website.

COMMIT!Forum is Fast Approaching — New Venue, New Conference Managers, Innovative Approaches, Great Conversations…

The October 2017 Event Will Convene in Washington DC’s Maryland suburbs — New Venue is the fabulous MGM National Harbor.

 

Posted August 1, 2017
By Hank Boerner – Chair & Chief Strategist – G&A Institute

The annual COMMIT!Forum has set the pace for Corporate Responsibility / Sustainability / Public Affairs / Corporate Communications professionals and their peers as “the place to gather” for a decade and more.

This is the longest running CSR / CR event and is part of the range of activities that were put in place and managed by the SharedXpertise Media LLC organization.

In April 2017, 3BL Media Group acquired the COMMIT!Forum — along with management of membership group, the Corporate Responsibility Association (CRA); the CRA webinar series; and publication of the influential CR Magazine.

You probably know the widely-recognized “100 Best Corporate Citizens” rankings — senior corporate management actively pursues this important CR Magazine recognition.

The professional membership CRA will now be managed by a unit of 3BL, the Corporate Responsibility Board.

The good news is that COMMIT!Forum conference is now under the innovative, very savvy management. The theme of the upcoming October 2017 event:

Brands Taking Stands – the Role of the Corporate Responsibility Practitioner as Companies Make Their Voices Heard.

The annual conference brings together CR practitioners, corporate communications officers, heads of foundations, not-for-profit leaders, sustainability pros, and media representatives.

The 2017 conference will feature 10 “issue tables,” to emphasize the value of networking and peer-to-peer sharing — these will be moderated by professional subject matter experts (SMEs):

  • Topic 1: Data Driven Content Strategies; Storytelling that Works
  • Topic 2: NextGen Reporting in a Changing Cultural Landscape
  • Topic 3: Emerging Social Influence on Supply Chains
  • Topic 4: CR Impact on Talent Acquisition and Retention
  • Topic 5: Lead or Follow: Relevance in the E-World
  • Topic 6: Where Are You? Your Company’s North Star on SDGs
  • Topic 7: Risk and Rewards of Taking a Stand
  • Topic 8: Engaging Your Stakeholders in Digital Advocacy
  • Topic 9: Partner Matching: Activating CR Initiatives and the Imperative of Collaboration
  • Topic 10: Materiality Assessments to Supply Chain Management: Digital Platforms that Drive Success

Finalists for the coveted Responsible CEO Award will participate in panel discussions and one-to-one interviews; these provide valuable insight into successful programs at companies where “purpose is integral to culture and mission,” conference organizers note.

The COMMIT! meetings have traditionally been held in New York City; this year the event moves to the MGM National Harbor, just outside of Washington DC and convenient for Amtrak travelers all along the Washington-NYC-Philadelphia-Boston business corridor.

Prestigious brands: CRA member flagship companies include: Marriott; Visa; IBM; Adobe; AT&T; Hess; Sprint; PwC; Gap; Intel; Johnson Controls; Aramark; Smithfield; and many more — representatives of these companies will be at the COMMIT!Forum.

G&A Institute team has enjoyed a long-time partnership with 3BL Media The going back to the days of both companies’ founding and has long been a sponsor of the COMMIT!Forum meetings.

G&A Institute team members — including EVP and Co-Founder Lou Coppola – will be active participants at COMMIT!Forum.

We are offering today to our connections a special offer for Early Bird registration:  10% off early bird pricing for COMMIT!Forum (extends through August 15th for you).

Save an additional 10% using G&A’s discount code “G&A2017CF” when you register at commitforum.com

The G&A Institute team looks forward to seeing you at the conference – -the latch key is out!

About 3BL Media Group
The 3BL team provides a multi-channel news and content distribution platform for corporate clients, including Report Alert, Triple Pundit, CSR Wire, SocialEarth, Just Means, and, of course, 3BL Sustainability Communications platform.

A new business unit is the Corporate Responsibility Board LLC, housing COMMIT!Forum, the CR Association, and CR Magazine. 3BL’s Dave Armon is CEO (before joining 3BL he was COO of PR Newswire).