Abercrombie & Fitch (NYSE: ANF) and Weight Watchers (NYSE: WTW) are two of the biggest names on the first "Blacklist" issued by Corporate Responsibility (CR) magazine.
30 corporations were listed for a lack of transparency on practices in employee benefits, climate-change, environment, finance and governance, or philanthropic efforts.
The list is based on the same data CR uses to create its "100 Best Corporate Citizens" ranking from the Russell 1000 index of large-capitalization stocks.
CR looks at 349 data points in categories like financial, governance and human rights. Dirk Olin, editor in chief of the magazine, said the Blacklist companies offered effectively no information.
“We decided to ask ourselves what the bottom of that list would look like, never dreaming for a minute that we would uncover a full 30 corporations where no relevant data at all could be turned up,” he said.
Other names on the Blacklist include Lorillard (NYSE: LO), Scripps Networks Interactive (NYSE: SNI) and Central European Media Enterprises (Nasdaq: CETV), which owns television stations like Pop TV of Slovenia.
CR said companies on the list had a total return on shareholder value of negative 7.38% over three years. That’s compared to positive 2.38% for companies on the Best Corporate Citizens list like Hewlett-Packare (NYSE: HPQ), Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), General Mills (NYSE: GIS) and IBM (NYSE: IBM).
“Our aggregate analyses,” Mr. Olin said, “make a strong argument for the business case for transparency.”
The full Blacklist is available as a pdf at the link below.
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