Uncovering Slavery in Steel
How far up a supply chain should a company be held accountable? In Carajas in Brazil’s eastern Amazon region, work is scarce and poverty and lawlessness are widespread. Opportunistic hacienda owners lure the desperate and unemployed to distant charcoal camps with promises of work, wages and shelter. Once at the camp, the owners levy illegal charges on the workers for transportation, equipment, lodging and food. Mario Osava, reporting for Inter Press Service last July described the debt as “pretext to keep laborers on the camp under threat and often under armed guard.” Deep in debt, workers succumb to involuntary servitude, …
Hologic (HOLX)
Hologic (HOLX – NASDAQ) is a developer, manufacturer and supplier of diagnostic and medical imaging systems that primarily serve women’s healthcare needs through three segments: mammography and breast care (75 percent of fiscal 2006 revenues), osteoporosis assessment (15 percent of revenues), and other (10 percent of revenues). The company recently acquired Cytyc, which dominates the cervical cancer testing market. Hologic holds a leading market position in breast cancer and osteoporosis detection in the US and stands to benefit from the acquisition of Cytyc, which has 70 percent share of the cervical cancer testing market. This deal will grant Hologic leadership …
Fresenius Medical Care (FMS)
Fresenius Medical Care (FMS – NYSE) is the world’s largest kidney dialysis company, offering both dialysis products and services. It provides dialysis treatment (75 percent of 2006 revenues) at its own dialysis clinics and supplies these clinics with dialysis products (25 percent of revenues). The company also sells dialysis products to other service providers. At year-end 2006, FMS had provided dialysis treatment to approximately 163,500 patients in 2,108 clinics located in over 25 countries. In a $70 billion global dialysis market, FMS has a leading 30 percent market share in the product market and a 10 percent share in the …
Business and Water Scarcity: The Reports Are In
Benjamin Franklin wrote, “When the well is dry, we learn the worth of water.” Residents of cities around the world are learning that lesson right now. Atlanta risks running out of drinking water before the end of the year if a severe drought holds and the city doesn’t take dramatic steps to curb consumption or find new water supplies. On the other side of the globe, some Chinese cities must now dig wells 600 feet deep to find clean drinking water in regions where aquifers were eight feet below the surface just a few decades ago. Millions of residents of …
2008 Advocacy Priorities
For the 2007-2008 shareholder resolution season (which roughly parallels an academic year), Trillium Asset Management Corporation (“Trillium”) has filed 18 shareholder proposals addressing a wide range of environmental and social justice concerns. Thirteen resolutions on which we are acting as lead* filer are highlighted in this article. All the proposals we are involved in are posted on our web site. Among its Wall Street peers, Bank of America (BAC)‘s internal greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals look good upon a first read: the bank has pledged that emissions from its own offices by will decline 7 percent from 2004 levels by …
Putting China on the Spot for Sudan
Trillium Asset Management Corporation (“Trillium”) will be working with two nonprofit organizations this fall to keep up the economic pressure on the Government of Sudan (GoS). The “selective divestment” model – developed by the Sudan Divestment Task Force adopted by Trillium – focuses on companies in strategic sectors, whose tax payments or royalties provide major revenue for the GoS. The sectors include oil and gas, electric power, or telecommunications. The model involves engagement with companies before determining whether to divest, depending on whether the investor believes that on balance, the economic and social benefit they provide to all Sudan’s citizens …
PowerShares Global Clean Energy Portfolio (PBD)
The PowerShares Global Clean Energy Portfolio (PBD – AMEX) is a global clean energy exchange traded fund (ETF) that was launched in June. It is significantly more diversified than the PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy Portfolio (PBW), which was launched in early 2005. That makes it the best single security for investors to gain exposure to the booming market for clean energy. The underlying index (the WilderHill New Energy Global Innovation Index – NEX) contains 87 stocks versus 43 in PBW. Because it is able to own shares of foreign companies that don’t trade on U.S. exchanges, PBD offers a much …
It Seems to Me
Now You Can Hire an Advertising Agency to Spread Your Social Responsibility Messages I have been a journalist for virtually all my working life, except when I took up residence at the J. Walter Thompson Company from 1963 through 1967, then the largest and one of the oldest advertising agencies in the land. I didn’t write any ads. I put out a weekly internal newsletter and represented the agency to the press. I had the run of the place, and it was a fun job. Every time a new account came in, there was a big celebration. Once, during a …
Strategic View
What Fair Trade Means for Alejandro and Elida Maldonado This summer I had the honor and the privilege to live for several days with Alejandro and Élida Maldonado, who own a small coffee farm in northern Peru. I saw first hand how fair trade is improving their lives, and those of 25 other families in the tiny village of Santa Rosa. We climbed through the desert up to Santa Rosa on potholed dirt roads in a rickety van sponsored by Equal Exchange, the fair trade import cooperative. (Here, finally, was a place that could use SUVs, and of course they …
Fighting Poverty, Protecting Biodiversity in Honduras
I spent my summer vacation being educated and inspired on an eye-opening trip through the Honduran rainforest as a new board member of the EcoLogic Development Fund.* EcoLogic is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to community-led sustainable development that strengthens the conservation of rural Latin American’s unique and threatened biological diversity. (Some readers may recognize the EcoLogic name from the microcredit loan fund they originated, which has since gone independent and is now known as Root Capital.) EcoLogic’s mission is to protect Latin American biodiversity while alleviating rural poverty: lofty goals that aren’t always seen as congruent, even within the conservation …
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