Wall Street Journal: Pharmaceutical, Biotech and Banking Companies Lead the Way in Social Responsibility
“It might seem counterintuitive that Merck KGaA, a German science and technology company with a market value of about $67 billion, would pay attention to a neglected tropical disease called schistosomiasis that mostly affects poor and rural communities. Similarly, providing financial services to underserved parts of the population might not be the most obvious growth strategy for Bank of Montreal, a Canadian banking and financial-services company with about $740 billion in assets under management as of July 31. Both companies found that serving local communities — and burnishing their reputations as socially responsible businesses — pays off. These efforts helped land Merck and BMO among the top 100 companies in The Wall Street Journal’s new ranking of the world’s most sustainably managed companies…” (Ochoa, 10/13).