After having introduced strategic changes to its investment process and strengthened the environmental and social dimensions of its portfolios at the beginning of 2003 (see news of 26 February 2003), the ethos Investment Foundation stopped publishing company environmental and social ratings on its website.
These ratings are now once again available on the website. A first series of analyses concerning 65 Swiss companies has been published, and all analyses of the investment universe will gradually be put on-line in the coming months.
For each company, a ratings grid shows:
- the company's overall, global environmental and social evaluation;
- the contribution of the different criteria of the environmental analysis (strategy, management system, impact of the production process and product/service quality) and of the social analysis (the company's relations with its customers, suppliers, employees, civil society and its shareholders).
The global evaluation positions the company in relation to the average of its sector on an evaluation scale going from triple minus (- - -) to triple plus (+++).
To carry out these analyses, the ethos Investment Foundation collaborates with the largest network of consultants providing research on the sustainability of companies, the SiRi Group, via its Swiss member CentreInfo SA in Fribourg. The data transmitted by CentreInfo are subsequently treated and analysed in a data base and then validated by the analysts of the ethos Foundation in order to lead to the final evaluation.
