GovernanceMetrics International
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March 5, 2007
GMI Releases New Ratings for All Rated Companies
Dear Colleague,
This is to let you know that GMI has just released new ratings and rating reports for all of the nearly 4,000 companies in our research universe. You will see the new information the next time you log onto the GMI subscriber site. FTP sites will also be updated overnight to reflect the new ratings data.
This release includes a significant expansion of our emerging market coverage, which now totals more than 400 companies in 26 countries.
You will also notice a change in some rating reports. From the very start, GMI has included a number of environmental risk factors when calculating our company ratings. But given the threat of increased regulation and financial exposure due to global warming, GMI wanted to provide our customers with additional information on this important topic. To that end, we are pleased to let you know that we have established a cooperative arrangement with Innovest Strategic Value Advisors (www.innovestgroup.com), the leading research firm in the area of environmental and social risk analysis.
Starting with today’s release, approximately 1,500 company reports published by GMI will also carry an environmental risk rating from Innovest in order to provide you an additional point of view. Innovest’s rating criteria examine board and executive oversight, risk management systems, disclosure and verification, eco-efficiency and health and safety matters, among other items. The Innovest rating system is modeled after bond ratings whereby the best performing companies relative to their same-sector peers receive ratings of AAA to CCC, where AAA represents the best and CCC the worst. The Innovest environmental risk rating, where available, appears in the Corporate Behavior section of GMI Rating Reports.
In recognition of the convergence among investors concerned about corporate governance, environmental risk and overall enterprise risk, Innovest reports will also start to carry the overall GMI global rating as well.
Please feel free to reply to this email, or contact info@gmiratings.com or your normal GMI contact for additional information on the latest GMI corporate governance ratings release. Thank you, as always, for your support.