This week, Governance & Accountability Institute issued a “Flash Report” about the continued expansion of corporate sustainability/responsibility reporting.  Our team led by Louis D. Coppola (EVP of G&A) and his team of five interns determined after careful examination that three-quarters – 75% — of the S&P500 Index ® Companies are now publishing corporate sustainability reports in 2014.
The growth in such reporting among the S&P 500 is dramatic: one-fifth of companies reporting in 2011 (just under 20%); more than half (53%) reporting a year later, in 2012; then 73% reporting by 2013 – 7-in-10 companies among the largest public issuer universe for investors.  And that number is holding steady:  75% reporting in 2014.
 

Thanks to our intern research team working with Lou Coppola [who designed the analysis] to create this important Flash Report:

• Selene Lawrence (2015 Team Leader)
  Hunter College — BS, Geography
• Tania Apicella
  Rutgers Business School — MBA
• Simon Fischweicher
  Bard College — MBA, Sustainability
• Evan Guyton
  Baruch College, Zicklin School of Business — MBA
• John Rovetto
  William Paterson, University of New Jersey — BS, Business Management

For more information on our GRI Data Partner Report Analyst Research Interns, please visit www.ga-institute.com/ the-honor-roll.html
We invite you to read the press release – there’s very important information for you that you will be seeing in many references over the coming year.
FLASH REPORT — Seventy-Five Percent (75%) of the S&P 500 Index Published Corporate Sustainability Reports in 2014
(Monday – June 08, 2015)
Source: Governance & Accountability Institute, Inc. – Sustainability reporting has become the clear norm in the U.S. capital markets as represented by our four year study of the S&P 500*. Over the last four years there has been significant uptake in sustainability reporting fromjust 20% in 2011 to 75% in 2015, demonstrating the necessity of measuring and managing ESG issues in response to growing stakeholder and stockholder demands. To put this in context G&A in tracking prior year(s) reporting found that:

• in 2011, just under 20% of S&P 500 companies had reported;
• in 2012, 53% (for the first time a majority) of S&P 500 companies were reporting;
• by 2013, 72% were reporting — that is 7-out-of-10 of all companies in the popular benchmark