G&A Institute announces the results of its annual S&P 500 sustainability reporting analysis. 90% of the S&P 500 published corporate sustainability reports, an all-time high!
For almost a decade, Governance & Accountability Institute (G&A) has been closely tracking the trends in sustainability reporting and disclosure activities of the publicly-traded companies included in the S&P 500® index. These reports are also sometimes titled as responsibility, citizenship, or ESG reports.
This universe of business enterprises represents more than 80% of the outstanding equity of the largest U.S. companies. The large-cap S&P 500 is used by thousands of global investment community players for the selection of equities by index managers, and by managers in a range of asset classes.
G&A’s annual research series began nine years ago with the analysis of sustainability reporting activities for publication year 2011, when we found just about 20% of the S&P 500 companies were publishing a sustainability report. G&A has found the volume of reporting has steadily increased each year since 2011 and the contents of the reports dramatically expanded over time. By 2012, more than half (53%) of the companies were publishing reports. That percentage grew to 75% by 2014 and to 86% by 2018.