Acciona, Repsol, Iberdrola and Inditex in Global 100 sustainable firms list

Acciona, Repsol, Iberdrola and Inditex are the only Spanish companies listed in the ranking of the 100 most sustainable companies in the world –’Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World 2012 ‘– that was presented during the celebration of the Davos World Economic Forum and developed by the magazine ‘Corporate Knights’.

Acciona is the first Spanish company to appear in the ranking, where it stands at place 37, it is followed by Repsol YPF SA, ranked 49; Iberdrola –chosen for the seventh consecutive year as part of this ranking– at position 55; and Inditex at 58.

This year the leaders are the UK, with 16 companies; Japan, with eleven; the United States and France, with eight companies each, and Australia, with seven. In addition, Scandinavian firms have five companies in the top 10, including the number one: Novo Nordisk.

This is the order of the top 10 for this year: Novo Nordisk A/S (Denmark), Natura Cosmeticos SA (Brazil), Statoil ASA (Norway), Novozymes A/S (Denmark), ASML Holding NV (the Netherlands), BG Group plc (the UK), Vivendi SA (France), Umicore SA/NV (Belgium), Norsk Hydro ASA (Norway) y Atlas Copco AB (Sweden).

Launched in 2005, this ranking is presented annually in Davos (Switzerland), while the magazine specialized in CSR, Corporate Knights, make the selection of the 100 most sustainable companies from a universe of 4,000 companies. Thereafter, and in a first phase, a selection of 400 leading corporations in the matter is made. These are then classified according the 11 KPIs used in the research model of Corporate Knights, and then it is verified by Bloomberg to determine the 100 finalists. The 11 KPIs are: energy production, coal production, water production, waste production, leadership in diversity, the linking of pay to ‘clean capitalism’, the percentage of the CEO’s remuneration with respect to other employees, production safety, ability to innovate and employee turnover.