The Brazilian NGO SITAWI – Finance for Good, published a study, “The most controversial Brazilian companies in 2013” which tracked 75 companies in the MSCI Brazil Index. SITAWI categorized and rated all negative news flows on ESG issues about these companies.
Highlights of the study include:
- The Telecom sector leads in absolute number of controversies, despite having only 3 companies, followed by Financials, Utilities and Energy
- Considering the Impact Rating of controversies, the Consumer Discretionary jumps to first place, followed by Telecom and Materials
- Themes with more controversies in Brazil are “Customers” and “Workers and Suppliers”, not a surprise given the strict and complex regulatory frameworks on these issues in the country
- OI (Telecom) leads the ranking in absolute controversies: unsurprisingly, the company announced a very controversial merger with Portugal Telecom in 1Q2014 which is generating significant litigation with minority shareholders
- Petrobras (Energy), TIM (Telecom) and Banco do Brasil (Financials) follow OI in the absolute ranking, while MRV (Consumer Discretionary – Home Construction) and CSN (Materials) jump on the ranking given the Impact Rating of their controversies.
Download a summary presentation of the study.
Contact Gustavo Pimentel, Head of Research and Advisory, to discuss SITAWI‘s capabilities on Brazil-focused ESG research.