ESG Methodologies. Back to the white board?
Volkswagen was considered one of the highest-ranking ESG companies in various market leading ESG indexes. Amazingly, the word “environment” was repeated 355 times in Volkswagen’s 2014 sustainability report, and was seemly a material issue the corporation has always addressed; which -of course- has been proven to be a lie. Now many providers are removing or have removed it from their indexes but unfortunately after the fact! Volkswagen stock almost lost half its value and investors paid the price for it. Looking at the board and management issues in past years, and adding a very high debt ratio on top of these issues, almost 145% of it market capitalization should have clearly removed Volkswagen from ANY ESG and Ethical investment universe. IdealRatings includes such measurements in its Ethical and ESG screens.
