SIRAN partnered with UK sustainable investment specialists EIRIS to assess 40 leading companies in ten emerging markets against key environmental, social and governance criteria, including indicators on board practice, bribery, human rights, labour standards in the supply chain, health and safety, environment, climate change and biodiversity. Countries assessed in the study include Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Israel, South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Russia and South Africa.

The report shows how the largest corporations in developing economic markets are addressing ESG issues and highlights the risks and opportunities these issues present to investors in emerging markets.

Most companies showed evidence of addressing at least some environmental, social and governance issues. This highlights opportunities for investors to encourage further progress by engaging with companies to seek better corporate disclosure.

The South African and Brazilian companies in the sample stood out overall as consistently having the highest assessments.  One reason may be that their local stock exchanges have each launched a responsible investment index.

In analysing companies by sector, disclosure related to climate change was strongest amongst companies in the resource sector, but even so, half of the 12 resource companies had no evidence of climate change disclosure.

Almost 93 per cent of companies assessed on this issue received only a limited grade for their human rights policies. No companies achieved a grade higher than "limited" for their human rights systems or reporting.

All but two of the 12 companies in the resource sector, where health and safety is a major concern, showed some evidence of policies in this area.

Most companies publicly disclosed some kind of anti-bribery policy. However, a majority of companies did not have a clear anti-bribery system nor showed evidence of reporting on their anti-bribery initiatives and only disclosed limited details of their management systems and performance.

More than 80 per cent of the companies disclosed their remuneration to directors, and 70 per cent separated the positions of board chair and chief executive, but fewer than half had boards where one third of the directors were independent.

Emerging markets are becoming the focus of international corporate responsibility initiatives. The Emerging Markets Disclosure Project, an international initiative spearheaded by SIF has surveyed the state of sustainability reporting in several emerging markets and has a sign-on statement for investors encouraging emerging market companies to improve sustainability reporting.

"Increasingly, responsible investors are focusing on emerging markets as they seek to diversify their equity investments. This research will help investors to identify ESG risks and opportunities which exist beyond developed markets when constructing their responsible investment strategies,” said Stephanie Maier, head of research at EIRIS

The Sustainable Investment Research Analyst Network is an analyst network that supports more than 150 North American social research analysts from 30 investment firms, research providers, and affiliated investor groups.

EIRIS provides independent research into the social, environmental governance and ethical performance of companies to abot 3,000 companies in Europe, North America and the Asia Pacific region. EIRIS is already retained by 100 institutional clients including pension and retail fund managers, banks, private client brokers, charities and religious institutions across Europe, North America, Australia and Asia.