If there’s one company that should be a slam dunk to rate based on environmental, social, and governance factors, it should be cigarette maker Philip Morris. But as it turns out, there’s a lot of disagreement among the major firms that provide ESG ratings.
“If you think about Philip Morris when it comes to ESG, obviously most people would think it’s very negative, and MSCI’s rating is negative,” said Michael Chen, director of portfolio management at Boston-based PanAgora Asset Management.
In actuality, it’s a bit more complicated, Chen added. “Remember ESG is made up of E, S and G,” he said. “From an E perspective, smoke is polluting, so that’s negative, and the S is negative because smoking causes lung cancer and harms people’s health. But Philip Morris has a pretty good governance structure, so Sustainalytics actually has them as neutral. It’s just different preferences at the end of the day.”
current levels and that was enough to spook plenty of investors yesterday. if you are just waking up this morning there are already a number of important global market stats that you need to know about. german business sentiment falling for a second straight month to its lowest levels in over two years. latest sign that the eurozone debt crisis starting to hit europe s largest economy. imf chief christine lagarde promising to send a mission to greece by monday. the announcement comes as she acknowledges the stress the euro currency is suffering. lagarde calling for more relaxed monetary easing and bonds backed by all countries. a conversation we ve talked about a lot. next week, bank of england risk watchdog is expected to allow lenders to free up billions of pounds from their cash buffers. the watchdog deputy is requiring hefty buffers stops the economy from getting the bull benefit of boe quantitative easing program. corporate news, samsung is investigating reports that