Matthew Kiernan, CEO of Innovest, a Canadian-based international investment advisory firm, whose analysis underpins the list, notes: “G100 companies are proactive in their response to investor and other stakeholder demands for better management of risks such as climate change. We believe that these sustainability leaders will create significant long-term value through innovation, lower costs, better employee recruiting and retention and consumer choice. G100 companies will likely continue to out-perform the competition as a result.”
This year, the G100 includes 5 Canadian companies, notably Alcan Inc., Enbridge Inc., Royal Bank of Canada, Sun Life Financial Inc. and Transcanada Corp. On a country basis, the United Kingdom includes 24 companies, with the United States (19) and Japan (13) following. Approximately one-third of the ranked companies will be replaced from last year’s list.
This year’s G100 will be recognized at the Davos World Economic Forum at a private dinner hosted by Innovest and Corporate Knights. The dinner discussions, under the theme, “The investor is the new regulator”, include Stephen J. Adler, Editor-in-Chief, BusinessWeek; Joseph Stiglitz, Professor, Columbia University and Nobel Laureate in Economics; and senior executives from Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Swiss Re and Daiwa Securities. The focus of their discussion will be how the wealth of financial markets can be harnessed to power the next industrial revolution.
“Like the companies ranked on this list, Innovest is proud to be at the forefront of this growing wave of sustainability,” says Matthew Kiernan. “Sustainability may be a moral issue for some, but we believe that real and sustained action will only be taken by those who understand how crucial this is to investment risk and returns,” he adds.
Toby Heaps, co-Founder and Editor of Corporate Knights magazine, says that, “Increased environmental scrutiny and regulatory action are opening the floodgates for trillions of dollars of investment capital to flow into companies with a green edge, and the G100 are well-placed to surf this long-wave.”
The G100, a select group of companies taken from a pool of some 1,800 international companies, provides investors – and other stakeholders – with a unique evaluation tool.