oekom research and GES intensify partnership on sustainable investment and ESG

oekom research, one of the leading rating agencies for sustainable investments, and independent engagement service provider GES join forces to an even greater extend. GES replaces its previous GES Risk Rating with the oekom Corporate Rating.

With this, all clients of the GES Engagement Forum are able to access the Corporate Rating information provided by oekom research. The oekom Corporate Rating covers a global universe of currently 3,500 companies, including all companies listed on the Stockholm stock exchange. In addition to that, oekom research benefits from a team of nine GES analysts who work on the oekom Corporate Ratings.

To better address the growing demand for sustainable investment services across the European markets, oekom research and GES already agreed on a strategic partnership in 2012. The cooperation was expanded to cover corporate analysis in early 2014. With the now achieved intensification two important players in the market for ESG investments can utilise their strengths even better. It also reflects the success of the cooperation so far.

GES is among the world’s most experienced independent engagement service providers for sustainable investments and has assets of 1 trillion Euros under management. Together with investors, GES engages with the management of companies regarding environmental social and corporate governance issues. For this, the GES Engagement Forum is the central platform and the basis of an active ownership process of the GES clients.

oekom research AG offers a detailed evaluation of a company’s sustainability performance with its oekom Corporate Rating that considers ecological, social and corporate governance issues in its analysis. In order to evaluate the sustainability performance of a company the analysts of oekom research define a set of about 100 specific criteria out of a pool of almost 1,000 indicators. More than 100 asset managers and asset owners routinely draw on the rating agency’s research in their investment decision-making. oekom research’s analyses therefore currently influence the management of assets valued at over 600 billion Euros.

Hanna Roberts, CEO of GES: “The positive experience both companies had been gaining during our cooperation so far and the great market expertise that could be created in this context encourages us to expand our cooperation even further. The additional depth of the oekom Corporate Rating is an important and helpful instrument for an effective engagement process, which is exactly what we want to offer to our clients.“

Robert Hassler, CEO of oekom research adds: “We are very happy that GES switched to our rating. We understand it as an acknowledgement of the quality of our work. With the cooperation with GES it had become clear how good we can work together on different levels, which is a perfect basis for a further cooperation. We are also glad that companies from Scandinavia are now able to use our ratings.”

Last week EIRIS and Vigeo announced their merger.