Author Archives: Adam Becker

Recent news around Canada’s tar sands, which are being used as a source of crude oil and have attracted a great deal of attention, made us consider the ways in which companies respond to the pressure put on them by NGOs.
Coalitions of institutional investors, including Co-operative Asset Management, have raised concerns with both Shell and [...]

We tend to expect that companies and organisations that operate in sectors with significant social impact should be keen to communicate that they have robust policies and systems in place to manage related areas of risk and opportunity. This isn’t always the case. Recent activity in the UK’s health services arena has highlighted this.
Michael Parkinson, [...]

How much do you know about your footwear? We would probably expect manufacturers to talk about their supply chains, their labour practices, in short, their corporate social responsibility. But, for some reason, there isn’t as much information out there as you might like.
Perhaps Britain’s best known shoe company is Clarks, or C&J Clark Ltd, to [...]

The last few weeks have seen a concentration of stories relating to women in business hitting the headlines. Apparently, female-managed hedge funds lost less money than male-managed ones, Harriet Harman will shake things up in the City and get more women on boards, and we can invest in a fund that specialises in gender-diverse companies.
It [...]

The United States Chamber of Commerce is a not-for-profit business federation that lobbies and campaigns for the interests of businesses across the US. That’s the idea, anyway. Right now, the US Senate is debating whether to pass the Waxman-Markey bill on climate change, a piece of fairly serious legislation, and the Chamber has stated its [...]

Financial reform is an area in which clear communication needs to be high on the agenda. Much of the recession, credit crunch, financial crisis, whatever you want to call it, has been attributed to people not understanding what they were buying or selling, or the risks they were taking in doing it. Now, we hope [...]

Having read in the FT that Wincanton has won a £275m contract with Marks & Spencer partly based on their ‘green outlook’, we thought it might be worth taking a closer look.
The company’s Environmental Strategy document is available here. It is clearly well thought-out, and positions Wincanton’s environmental strategy as a key part of their [...]

The Norwegian government pension fund has decided to get active in respect to water management. It plans to engage with companies to improve their management of water related risk and their reporting of this aspect of their activities.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission doesn’t require companies to disclose information about this issue. However, if this [...]

Ryanair’s Michael O’Leary is a reliable source for a good quote. The latest is his reaction to the British transport secretary’s plans to replace short-haul flights with a high-speed rail network “For reasons of carbon reduction and wider environmental benefits”.
O’Leary’s take on this was:
“It is insane.”
And…
“On [return] domestic flights from Glasgow to London passengers [...]

The Food Standards Agency report on the nutritional value of organic food versus ‘conventionally produced foodstuffs’ has produced a large amount of press coverage over the past few days. This coverage has sparked debate, letters, claims and counter-claims by experts and amateurs alike.
Time for me to weigh in.
The study looked at nutritional value, finding ‘no [...]