Corporate Social Responsibility

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4.09.2008 - 12:00pm ET

CSR News from:	Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, Inc.
News Categories:	Socially Responsible Investing
	CSR - General

Innovest Strategic Value Advisors Announce New "Opportunities for the Majority" (OM) Index

(CSRwire) The Opportunities for the Majority Office of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Innovest Strategic Value Advisors announce the successful completion of a highly innovative project – to create the Opportunities for the Majority (OM) Index of publicly traded firms operating in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region for investors.

MIAMI, FL – April 8, 2008 - The Opportunities for the Majority Office of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Innovest Strategic Value Advisors announce the successful completion of a highly innovative project – to create the Opportunities for the Majority (OM) Index of publicly traded firms operating in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region for investors.

The new Index rates and ranks LAC companies based on their performance and positioning on critical OM issues. The project, commissioned by the IDB in June 2007, is a logical extension of Innovest's previous work creating indexes based on companies' performance on other "sustainability" issues such as climate change, eco-efficiency and community investment.

"For LAC companies, the issues related to meeting the needs of the majority in the region represent one of the most difficult management challenges they face", said Matthew Kiernan, Innovest's CEO. "We fully expect that our investor clients will pay close attention to this new Index as a way to gain a fuller understanding of the overall quality of management of the various companies which are in – and not in – the new Index. This new OM Index could become a real game-changer."

Over 70% of the population of the LAC region lives on less than $3,260 a year. This 'majority' of the population is both deprived of access to opportunities for wealth creation and underserved by the products and services that effective markets provide. Throughout the region, moreover, the wealthy have benefited more from the economic growth of the past decade than have the poor.

Responding to this reality, the IDB launched the Opportunities for the Majority program, to engage the private sector in addressing the needs of this Majority. Studies conducted on behalf of the IDB suggest that the Majority represents a stable and substantial market for companies willing to engage in it responsibly and with commitment and creativity. It is also a market where national companies enjoy significant advantages of proximity and market knowledge. By addressing this market responsibly, the private sector can become part of the solution to the challenge of poverty facing the LAC region.

The OM framework, developed by Innovest, focuses on key evaluation criteria, whose relative importance were established after stakeholder engagement with academics and experts on Base of the Pyramid theory and practice from around the globe. Seventy-five (75) national and multinational companies operating in the LAC region were interviewed and then analyzed within the OM framework to benchmark their performance. This baseline list of 75 companies and the conceptual model which underpins it provide an excellent framework to assess accurately and predict the out-performance of firms based on their ability to capture opportunities within the Majority.

The top performing firms constitute the 2007 OM Leadership Index and are presented below.

The OM Leadership Index marks the beginning of the OM story, not its end. We expect that both its constituents and the underlying selection criteria will evolve and improve going forward, but the creation of the initial Index is an important first step. It is to anticipated that its very existence will stimulate improved awareness of OM possibilities, both for the Index companies themselves and, perhaps even more importantly, for their peers.

For the Index to achieve maximum impact "on the ground," it will need to influence the actual investment choices and behavior of major investors – giving more favorable consideration to companies more heavily rated in the Index. The ideal scenario in this regard would be to create an investable OM Index, which would maximize investment flows to superior performers while simultaneously incentivizing laggards. An investable OM Index could prove extremely attractive to institutional investors already strongly interested in emerging markets and seeking an "information edge" and differentiated approach. Innovest and the IADB are currently planning this next phase.

Ratings and research reports from Innovest Strategic Advisors analyzing the environmental, social and governance performance of over 1,750 companies and their industries, including the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations, is available through Innovest's partner CSRwire at www.csrwire.com/reports/independent

Innovest Strategic Value Advisors is an internationally recognized investment research and advisory firm specializing in analyzing companies’ performance on environmental, social, and strategic governance issues, with a particular focus on their impact on competitiveness, profitability, and share price performance. Innovest currently has offices in New York City, Toronto, San Francisco, London, Paris, Sydney, and Tokyo. For the second year in a row, Thomson Extel named Innovest the #1 Leading Independent Research Provider of 'extra-financial research'.

For more information please contact:

Peter Wilkes, Managing Partner
Innovest Strategic Value Advisors
212-421-2000 x216

Greg Schneider, Director
CSRwire
802-251-0110 x1105

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