News & Commentaries by Ron Robins ————————————————————- More Companies Reporting on ESG. “Around 82% of S and P 500 companies published corporate sustainability reports in 2016, according to the Governance and Accountability Institute, up from 20% in 2011 and 72% in 2013.” [COMMENTARY] These are great numbers and demonstrate how companies are responding to investor…

News & Commentaries by Ron Robins ————————————————————- Key ESG Trends. “From a geographic perspective, the GSIA data showed that European and Canadian assets were more diversified across different implementation strategies: in addition to negative screening, there were a higher proportion of assets using norms-based screening, corporate engagement, and integration approaches. Within the United States, the…

News & Commentaries by Ron Robins ————————————————————- The 2017 100 Best Corporate Citizens. “Compiling the 18th annual list of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens began with our research team documenting 260 data points of disclosure and performance measurements for the entire Russell 1000. The data was gleaned from publicly available information and each company was…

News & Commentaries by Ron Robins ————————————————————- Clearing the Deck For ESG Integration.“Advisors are rapidly running out of excuses to avoid, environmental, social and governance investing (ESG)… A recent survey by State Street, voluminously titledThe Investing Enlightenment: How Principle and Pragmatism Can Create Sustainable Value through ESG, casts light on the increasing client demand of…

News & Commentaries by Ron Robins ————————————————————- The race is on for socially responsible investing in Japan.“The Japanese market is finally moving towards an ESG environment, similar to the mature markets of the US and Europe.” [COMMENTARY] This is good news for ethical investors globally. Historically, Japanese companies have been reticent to disclose much ESG…

News & Commentaries by Ron Robins ————————————————————- Steps remain to fully integrate ESG. (Article also reviews important new ESG study.) “Across all 12 industries, the positive effect on equity return is 6.12 percentage points higher for ESG companies on average. And, if one looks at only the eight industries with clearly higher ESG returns, this…