CORPORATE SUSTAINABILITY ASSESSMENT

Corporate Sustainability is a business approach that creates long-term shareholder value by embracing opportunities and managing risks deriving from economic, environmental and social developments.

The identification of sustainability leaders for the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes is based on the Corporate Sustainability Assessment of SAM Research.

A defined set of criteria and weightings is used to assess the opportunities and risks deriving from economic, environmental and social developments for the eligible companies.

A major source of information is the SAM questionnaire which is completed by companies participating in the annual review. Further sources include company and third-party documents as well as personal contacts between the analysts and companies.

The external assurance report by Deloitte ensures that the corporate sustainability assessments are completed in accordance with the defined rules.

Based on SAM Research's corporate sustainability assessment companies are ranked within their industry group and selected for the Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes, if they are among the sustainability leaders in their field. For a detailed description of this selection process you can download the guidebook for the Dow Jones Sustainability World Indexes and the guidebook for the Dow Jones STOXX Sustainability Indexes.

You can also download a presentation about the most important characteristics of the methodology and about key results of the DJSI Review 2008.