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The changes announced by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index , DJSI, this week draw attention to some well-known companies that have been eliminated. Does this mean that these companies are no longer responsible, that they deserve expulsion? The DJSI does not publicly disclose why companies enter or leave, it only explains it to the company in question. Unfortunately the DJSI has great potential to create confusion. As we mentioned in a previous article ( What are sustainability indices for , which I recommend reading) the DJSI is a “ best in class ” index . This means that it analyzes the relative sustainability of companies within each of the 19 supersectors and 57 sectors (in the global index) and in different geographical distributions (World, Europe, North America, Asia Pacific and Korea). There are companies that we could consider very responsible but that, according to the index criteria, are not as responsible as other companies in the same sector and therefore may not be there, or may leave at a certain time if a better one enters. The objective of the index is not to rank companies by sustainability, but to compare them with companies in the same sector and take the 10% of the most sustainable in each sector, with the objective of achieving 15% of capitalization in the supersectors (banking , public services, technology, consumer goods, food and beverages, etc.). Banks are compared with banks, tobacco companies with tobacco companies, oil companies with oil companies.
This allows for a better comparison of Phone Number List companies and allows the user who wants to invest in companies in specific sectors to know which are the most sustainable companies in that sector, according to DJSI criteria. It is assumed that the user knows how to use the product. But… This week, companies such as Coca Cola and Hewlett Packard left the world index and banks such as Societé Generale and Intesa Sanpaolo and an automotive company such as Hyundai entered. From the North American segment, among others, Microsoft and FedEx left and Xerox, Sprint and the famous Goldman Sachs (!) entered. Volkswagen and Abertis came from Europe. The implication, for much of the public, is that these companies have stopped being responsible. NO. What happens is that in some of the criteria used by Sustainable Asset Management , SAM (institution that evaluates companies), the company lost points, which makes it not among the 10% of those analyzed in the sector and Since they don't fit anymore, they have to take it out. The big problem with the DJSI is its deliberate methodology, not only of taking the “ best in class ”, which prevents comparisons between “classes”, but the most serious thing is that it ignores a small detail: the impact of the product or service. It assumes that this is not important, that economic, corporate governance, environmental or social behavior is important. Almost nothing.
Can anyone say, with a straight face, that British Tobacco is more sustainable than Coca Cola? Or that an alcoholic beverage producer is more responsible than a telecommunications company? Or that a gambling or porn movie company is more responsible than a food company? They can all be very responsible, if we ignore the product they produce. The responsibility of the product or service is not analyzed. A company that produces weapons, but produces them paying fair wages, without pollution, with support for the community, or a tobacco company that has sustainable agriculture, pays fair prices and has excellent working conditions, can be part of the index if they are better than other companies. in the same sector. While a company like Coca Cola is expelled for not being among the top 10% of the companies analyzed. The index does not compare an arms company with a food company because they are in different subsectors. But does it make any sense, for us mere mortals, that one is there and the other is not? Instead of best in class , what is awarded, in some sectors, is the “least bad.” If you are in the sector of “bad” companies you have more opportunities. The user is assumed to know and understand all of this. It is worth remembering what we said in the article mentioned at the beginning: sustainability indices “...are not intended to be a source of information for the public, they are not information intermediaries between companies and the public.
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发表于 2024-3-7 16:33:23