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Investor interest in corporate sustainability continues to grow, as seen by the attention given to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink's call last month, when he said that every company needs to show "how it makes a positive contribution to society.”
And this month, a group of nine asset managers including Bill McNabb of Vanguard will write CEOs asking them to expanding their reporting to include data on “key risk factors and mega trends (such as climate change) … For too long, companies have sacrificed long-term value creation to generate short-term results.”
Now it's the turn of the retail investor, as Yahoo Finance joins the discussion.
The website has begun offering sustainability scores on more than 2,000 publicly traded companies, furnished by Sustainalytics, the independent supplier of environment, social, and governance (ESG) research.
The new ESG ratings page shows a company’s ESG performance against peers as well as its historic ESG performance. The ESG score for Apple (ticker: AAPL) as calculated by Sustainalytics, for example, is 69, putting it in the 72 percentile of companies . It also shows if a company is involved in controversial products or services like animal testing or gambling.
The research offers to retail investors the kind of data traditionally available only to institutions, and that has been closely guarded by providers. Sustainalytics, which is 40% owned by Morningstar, is also behind the Morningstar Sustainability Rating for global mutual funds and ETFs.
“Current research shows that investors – particularly women and millennials – increasingly seek impact with their investments, and believe they can achieve competitive returns with companies that reflect their values,” Sustainalytics says in a statement.
Yahoo Finance said that it would eventually provide ESG ratings on ETFs and mutual funds.