Solid Investing – Powered by ASSET4

We profoundly believe that environmental, social and governance (ESG) information is more relevant than ever to the investment community. As firms plan for the future beyond these troubling times, having a more transparent and holistic view of corporate performance and risk will truly be a key competitive advantage.

ASSET4 is the world’s leading provider of this information as is apparent in the stories below. Whether it is our support of the Fortune Accountability Rating; our work with Vigeo, the leading CSR rating agency in Europe; our recently released one-click ESG interface; or our methodic and comparable data gathering process; our leadership is clear.

I hope you have a chance to review these stories and I look forward to working with you in the near term to prepare you and your firm for 2009.

Peter Ohnemus ASSET4 President and CEO

Fortune’s 100 Most Accountable Companies Rating – Powered by ASSET4

Recently, Fortune magazine published its annual ranking of business responsibility, also known as the Accountability Rating. The data was provided by the ASSET4 data and the rating produced by AccountAbility and the Csrnetwork.

The ranking illustrates the quality of the companies’ commitment to social and environmental goals. The leading company is Vodafone followed by General Electric, HSBC Holdings, France Telecom and HBOS.

• To read an article discussing each of the top 10 companies, click here.
• To see the complete list of 100 companies, click here.
• To read about the methodology, click here.

Vigeo Enhances Its Ratings Capabilities by Acquiring Access to the World’s Largest Database of Extra-Financial Information from ASSET4

 “Having access to the ASSET4 information and analysis tools reinforces our ability to evaluate a company’s overall CSR performance”, said Nicole Notat, Vigeo Chairwoman. “When we analyse a company we use a detailed and rigorous framework to evaluate its policies, implementation and results. ASSET4 offers a perfect input into this process by providing our analysts immediate access to over 250 key performance indicators for each company. This in turn will enable us to focus our research work on the qualitative assessment of this information and will result in an even more robust and multi-faceted view of a company’s corporate social responsibility performance. ASSET4 has appeared to us as a very reliable source of objective and traceable ESG information, which is why we are happy to be working with them.”

• To read the complete press release in English, click here.
• To read the complete press release in French, click here.

The Importance of Consistent and Comparable ESG Performance Data

Socially responsible investment (SRI) funds have experienced remarkable growth since the mid-1990s, and the total market size of SRI initiatives in Europe reached €2.7trn in 2007, according to the European Social Investment Forum. The impressive growth in responsible investment mandates as well as the increased attention paid in the media to the environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of corporations have led an increasing number of asset managers to become interested in incorporating ESG information into their valuation models of companies. One of the biggest needs to make this incorporation successful is reliable, neutral and objective information on the ESG performance of companies that allows for the impact of various ESG factors to be carefully analysed and understood.

To read the complete article from Christopher Greenwald, the ASSET4, Director of Data Content, please click here.

assetmasterProfessional One-Click Demo Now Available

Would you like to assess the environmental, social and governance (ESG) profile of companies with only a click of your mouse? As the leading provider of extra-financial investment research information, we at ASSET4 have created a One-Click ESG system that enables you to have at your fingertips ESG information on over 2300 companies – anytime and anywhere.

assetmasterProfessional One-Click enables you to generate easy-to-read analysis and benchmarking reports on the ESG performance of your portfolio based on a variety of standard key performance indicator (KPI) configurations, including the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). Along with this easy-to-use solution, ASSET4 also provides a flexible system that enables you to create customised company assessments and export the data into your Excel-based models.

For a short demo, click here.	For a brochure (pdf), click here.