The Dow Jones Sustainability Index has become a well known brand in corporate sustainability and ESG world in the last decade. It is based on the Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) that now belongs to S&P Global.

However fewer professionals know that it is not only the indices that are made based on this assessment but every year there is also a Sustainability Yearbook published that gives an even deeper insight into the scores and performance of the evaluated companies.

The 2021 Yearbook has been published on the 8th of February 2021 and more information is publicly available than ever before including company scores and articles.

Over 7,000 companies assessed in the 2020 Corporate Sustainability Assessment (CSA) were considered for The Sustainability Yearbook and only 631 companies with top scores made it into the Yearbook this year.

Companies can get awards (gold, silver and bronze) if they belong into the top 1%, 5% or 10% of their industry. The criteria of becoming ‘just a member’ of the yearbook for companies is to be within the top 15% of their industry and they must also achieve a score within 30% of their industry’s top performing company.

By opening the ranking section of the website it is easy to make a short review about how sustainable Central European companies are compared to global leaders according to this survey.

Actually there are 2 companies which made it to the list if the 630 leading companies. Interestingly both of them are from the oil and gas company which is somewhat understandable based on the typically large company size in the sector and the ESG pressure on these companies. The companies are namely:

  • From Austria OMV,
  • From Hungary MOL.

Both of the abovementioned companies are Yearbook members which means they are in the top 15% of their sectors but not in top 10%.

Outside the CE region European companies represent a significant part of the yearbook membership with a large number of companies from UK, Germany, France, Switzerland and the Netherlands being on the top of their sectors.

The detailed results and rankings of the Corporate Sustainability Assessment can be accessed through the website of S&P global with a significant amount of other valuable information.

The original press release about the yearbook can be found on this link.

Cover picture: depositphotos

Note: the author of this article has business relationship with one of the above mentioned companies which did not influence the preparation of this article.