Citigroup has agreed to pay the SEC $75 million to settle charges that the bank hid exposure to more than $40 billion in subprime CDOs. (That works out to roughly $1 fine for every $500 worth of hidden exposure.) Read the full SEC complaint.

In what the New York Times called "an unusual move" the SEC also charged one current and one former Citi executive for making the misstatements. Former CFO Gary Crittenden will pay $100,000 and Arthur Tildesley - formerly the head of investor relations - will pay $80,000. Neither Citi nor the execs admitted to any wrongdoing.

According to the SEC enforcement director Robert Khuzami, Citigroup had boasted in 2007 "of superior risk management skills in reducing its subprime exposure to approximately $13 billion," when in fact,  "billions more in CDO and other subprime exposure sat on its books undisclosed to investors."

"We are pleased that we have reached agreement with the SEC to put this matter concerning certain 2007 disclosures behind us, and that the SEC is not charging Citi or any individual with intentional or reckless misconduct," said Citigroup spokeswoman Shannon Bell.

As we have noted in our bailout tracker, Citi's subprime losses have been massive, and resulted in multiple taxpayer-financed bailouts -- $45 billion overall.

Citi execs have in the past said they were "deeply sorry" for ... not predicting the market collapse.

We've reported on some of Citi's specific CDO dealings with a hedge fund called Magnetar, and some of the disclosure questions about those deals as well as others. For more on trouble Citi and others could be facing, check out our bank investigations cheat sheet.

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.   This article is republished with permission under a Creative Commons license.

There’s an easy tendency to read corporate responsibility reports with skepticism, discounting high-sounding language about policies and principles as “greenwashing” that largely serves a company’s public relations goals.

GE CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt

When the report is issued by GE, however, I think it pays to read the language carefully and take notes.  With operations in 100 countries and about 300,000 employees, GE generates annual revenue of $156 billion.  The company’s stock is the most widely-held in the world, with more than 5 million shareholders.

While GE’s corporate behavior doesn’t always please everyone (and, in fact, often infuriates many), the company’s rigorous attention to management and best practices for over a century has regularly placed it at the head of the corporate pack.   As Fortune magazine put it: “Through good years and bad, GE consistently does things the rest only wish they could.”

And so it is with GE’s 2009 Citizenship Report – Renewing Responsibilities – a 40-page document, supported with additional materials on the GE web site, in which the company sets forth a vision of addressing global concerns with confidence, integrating  sustainability into its core business strategy.

“Our goals," GE says, "are to make money, make it ethically and make a difference."

In fact, the company views two of the world's most pressing societal issues - the environment and health care - as huge commercial opportunities, central to its future.  GE's "ecoimagination" product line, launched in 2005, last year generated $18 billion in revenue, or 28% of the corporate total.

Not an Accounting Exercise

Assume that GE’s corporate citizenship team has spent considerable time and attention formulating the message it wants to convey in this report.   Assume the message has been crafted by well-paid writers and – maybe even more importantly – vetted by high-priced lawyers.   And then assume that the highest-levels of management are comfortable not only with the facts and figures in the report, but with the overall tone of the message from the top.

Then pay attention to the language.

“In light of what many have called the Great Recession,” says CEO Jeffrey R. Immelt, “the world is reset.  Now we must lead an aggressive renewal to win the future.”

“Citizenship is not a spectator sport," writes Sam Nunn, chair of the GE board of directors’ Public Responsibilities Committee. "Companies with global reach and impact like GE must set commercial priorities to increase shareholder value while recognizing that our business foundation rests on forward progress on public policy imperatives. GE is making a dedicated effort to develop its business strategy so that its products and services have a positive human impact and produce long-term business success.”

The report goes to considerable lengths to address the big picture: “Economies are rebuilding after the financial crisis, and with that comes the opportunity to reshape systems toward a pathway of sustainability — one that enables positive human impact. The challenge of meeting the needs of today’s nearly seven billion people, and tomorrow’s nine billion, is immense. The limits of the planet’s natural resources — clean water, air, energy and land — are already stretched. Closing the global gap between where we are and where we need to get to cannot be achieved by a return to business as usual.”

And this: “In the end, the return on investment for corporate citizenship is a world fit to live in, do business in, and hand down to our children — and this requires long-term commitment. The impact of successful corporate citizenship comes from driving the conversations (with employees, customers, regulators, competitors and markets) needed to catalyze systemic change.  Turning corporate citizenship at this level into an accounting exercise linked to profit and loss calculations is wrong, a waste of time and a concept mistaken from the very beginning.” (Emphasis added.)

OK, it’s just language.  But language can matter greatly.  One of the tactical truisms of corporate responsibility reporting is that once a company has taken the plunge (and in this case, GE seems to be diving into some pretty deep water), retreat from the commitment is far more difficult.  The language doesn't guarantee that GE or one of its businesses won't be in the news in a negative context sometime soon.  It does mean, however, that the company is in the game and on record with some long-term thinking regarding corporate priorities.

There are no startling statistics in the GE report.  Compliance, which many companies place in a silo separate from corporate responsibility, gets featured up front.  GE uses about 700 designated ombudspersons throughout he company who act as independent resources for reporting integrity or compliance concerns; the company says anyone reporting a problem is "fiercely protected from any retribution."   Last year, there were 1,641 "integrity concerns" reported through the process, with a resulting 420 disciplinary actions, including 118 firings.  (Not bad, when placed in the context of almost 300,000 employees.)

On a broader scale, GE’s citizenship strategy is focused on three areas: energy and climate change, sustainable healthcare, and community building - all “underpinned by our commitment to operational excellence.”  Greenhouse gas emission and intensity are improving relative to established benchmarks; new technologies are driving healthcare breakthroughs; and the company seems mindful of how delicately an enterprise of its size must tread in dealing with governments around the world.

“We recognize that any business that is promoting a view on how best to achieve public policy goals while also advocating for its own commercial priorities runs the risk of running into conflicts of interests, both real and perceived,” the report says. “There are legitimate concerns that businesses may influence public processes unduly to achieve private ends, or conversely may lose commercial focus by aligning too closely with governments’ goals.”

Heavily influencing GE’s corporate citizenship strategy is an economic reality: more than half the company’s revenue now comes from outside the United States, “increasingly from emerging markets such as China and Brazil,” reports CEO Immelt.  The result is a focus on localized research and development in countries around the globe and “a plan to sell these products in every corner of the world.”

Countrywide Home Loans Inc. will pay $108 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it collected excessive fees from borrowers who were struggling to keep their homes.

Countrywide, which was acquired by Bank of America in 2008, was the top mortgage servicer in the United States at the time of that acquisition, with a balance of more than $1.4 trillion in its servicing portfolio.

FTC Chairman Jon Liebowitz said the $108 million represents one of the largest judgments imposed in an FTC case, and the largest mortgage servicing case.  He said it will be used to reimburse overcharged homeowners whose loans were serviced by Countrywide.

The FTC’s announcement made it clear that the practices pre-dated Countrywide’s acquisition by Bank of America.   Bank of America said in a statement that it agreed to settle the charges “to avoid the expense and distraction associated with litigating the case,” which also resolves litigation by bankruptcy trustees.  The settlement contains no admission of wrongdoing and “allows us to put all of these matters behind us,” the company said.

Bank of America added that in its current home loan business “our commitment to transparency and fair and responsible customer treatment is carried through in provisions of the settlement with the FTC, particularly additional disclosure of affiliate relationships and fees for default-related services.”

“Life is hard enough for homeowners who are having trouble paying their mortgage. To have a major loan servicer like Countrywide piling on illegal and excessive fees is indefensible,” said the FTC’s Mr. Leibowitz. “We’re very pleased that homeowners will be reimbursed as a result of our settlement.”

The FTC said that when homeowners fell behind on their payments and were in default on their loans, Countrywide ordered property inspections, lawn mowing, and other services meant to protect the lender’s interest in the property.  But rather than simply hire third-party vendors to perform the services, Countrywide created subsidiaries to hire the vendors.

“The subsidiaries marked up the price of the services charged by the vendors – often by 100% or more – and Countrywide then charged the homeowners the marked-up fees” as part of a strategy to increase profits from default-related services in bad economic times, the FTC said. “As a result, even as the mortgage market collapsed and more homeowners fell into delinquency, Countrywide earned substantial profits by funneling default-related services through subsidiaries that it created solely to generate revenue.”

According to the FTC, under most mortgage contracts, homeowners must pay for necessary default-related services, but mortgage servicers may not mark up the cost to make a profit or charge homeowners for services that are not reasonable or appropriate to protect the mortgage holder’s interest in the property.

The FTC also charged that in servicing loans for borrowers trying to save their homes in Chapter 13 bankruptcy proceedings, Countrywide made false or unsupported claims to borrowers about amounts owed or the status of their loans.

Photo by TheTruthAbout, courtesy Flickr

Shareholder activists will find several provisions to their liking in the Senate Finance Committee's new 1,566-page  financial reform bill, which passed the U.S. Senate by a vote of 59-39; the measure must be reconciled with a House bill.

The Senate measure includes major provisions affecting the election of corporate board members and executive compensation.

The Senate bill requires directors to win by majority vote in uncontested elections, according to The Wall Street Journal, and would give the SEC authority to grant shareholders proxy access to nominate directors.

On executive compensation, the bill gives shareholders the right to a nonbinding vote on executive pay, excluding golden parachutes.  The Senate bill also requires so-called clawback provisions that force executives to repay any earnings based on inaccurate financial statements, according to the New York Times.

(In the House bill, shareholders would have the same rights on say-on-pay.  Regulators would have a say on compensation practices, not on pay itself, according to the Associated Press.)

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Senate bill also creates an Investment Advisory Committee within the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as an Office of Investor Advocate within the SEC to identify problems in dealing with SEC.

The Senate bill also creates a federal regulator to write and enforce rules protecting consumers of financial products like checking accounts, mortgages and payday loans. The bill increases the authority of state regulators to enforce protections, according to the Times.

Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, told CNBC that a bank reform bill will be signed by the president well before July 4.  "I've cleared my calendar for the month of June to get this done," said Frank.

This article has been updated from the original to reflect subsequent publication of the full text of the Senate Finance Committee Bill.

When I was a practitioner leading “CSR Integration” at a Big 4 accounting firm, we frequently asked the question, “had our Andersen colleagues applied a CSR perspective to their day jobs would we have remained the Big 5?” Today, within a business school context, I’m being asked a similar question: If business schools did a better job of graduating responsible business leaders, might we have avoided the financial meltdown?

The similarities between my corporate role and academic role are considerable. As a CSR professional, despite being quoted in The Wall Street Journal as having landed my “dream job,” I was committed to making it go away. My goal was to so fully integrate social and environmental responsibility into the way the business was run that my job would become obsolete.

Now, within a business school setting, I face the same challenge. I envision a day when CSR will not be handled by separate centers of excellence focused on business responsibility and sustainability but instead will be integrated throughout the curriculum and research programs.

Modifying the Framework

In short, what I argued for in a corporate setting is what I’m still advocating for today’s business schools: Integration.

Sounds easy enough, but in fact, integration of social and environmental factors into business represents a fundamental shift in the way companies are run and what students are taught. Neither companies nor MBA courses focus on long-run value of the firm; strategy and finance courses assume the goal is to maximize shareholder value and companies get rewarded for quarterly performance.

So I ask: is it fair to expect MBAs to create this change without company executives and business school faculty modifying the framework from which they respectively lead and teach? Similarly, is it realistic to think that a small group of CSR professionals sitting in “corporate headquarters” can really change the way employees think and business gets done?

Today’s students are already instigating changes. Indeed, almost 40% of incoming full-time MBAs indicate that they chose to attend Haas based at least in part upon its focus on “social impact.” And for this group we offer our student the opportunity to engage with leading companies that are making the fundamental shift toward integration. We want our students to experience what it feels like firsthand, to be a part of that change, so that they can go do it in their own companies upon graduation.

Here at the Center, we’re adamant that they not become Chief Sustainability Officers or CSR managers, but instead integrate sustainable thinking and action into their day jobs as consultants, product managers, financial analysts, etc. This semester, our MBAs have helped WalMart determine the ROI on its employee sustainability program, worked with eBay to identify business opportunities to reduce the shipping and packaging impacts of the millions of eBay transaction each day, and pitched to Gap Inc. how it might extend its successful social media presence to encompass its leadership in CSR. Not to be outdone, our undergrads are helping Disney Consumer Products understand how to reduce the environmental impact of the division's paper usage.

Graduating Conscientious Leaders

But to fully realize the goal of integrating CSR we must reach the other 60%, connecting with them on their own (non-CSR-related) turf. In the last three years the Center has successfully engaged some of the future financial and software “wizards” of Wall Street to become principals in a $1.3 million investment fund managed with an eye to both financial and social returns. In fact, applications to become managers of the fund—the only one of its kind run by a top business school—were up 50% this year.

Our Dean Rich Lyons emphasizes that we “prepare leaders who define what’s next for our markets and our societies,” and through our courses and corporate engagement, the Center for Responsible Business is helping our students do just that. But undoubtedly there is more to be done. We continue to work with faculty throughout Haas to integrate a broader stakeholder perspective into teaching and research. I am heartened by the willingness of faculty members whose research is often grounded in maximizing shareholder value and market fundamentalism, to engage in debate on the role of business in society. Together we are committed to finding a common framework where we teach and research what we want our students to care about most.

The financial meltdown, acceleration of climate change and global inequity of social welfare compel us to reconsider how our corporate actions impact the people and world around us. Graduating fully informed and conscientious leaders in every business discipline is the first step in changing the way business gets done and creating a more sustainable world.

Jo Mackness is Executive Director of the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley

Campus Photo: yanec, courtesy of Flickr

The survey found that more than half of approximately 2,100 business professionals (56 percent) surveyed think more financial statement fraud will be uncovered this year and in 2011, as compared to the last three years.

Other findings of the survey:

• More than one-third (38 percent) of respondents stated that in the current economic environment, “revenue recognition manipulation” is the type of financial statement fraud of greatest concern. Meanwhile, 18 percent of respondents cited “big bath” write-offs while expectations are low and 14 percent cited “manipulation for debt covenant compliance purposes.”
• One half (50 percent) of respondents said the financial services industry will have the greatest percentage increase in financial statement fraud alleged by the SEC during 2010, as compared to 2009. This was followed by technology, media and telecommunications (14 percent), consumer business (12 percent), life science and healthcare (10 percent) and manufacturing (6 percent).
• One-quarter (25 percent) of respondents believed that the action most useful to their organization for mitigating the risk of financial statement fraud would be training staff to recognize financial statement fraud. Furthermore, 22 percent believed that improving the 'tone at the top' would mitigate the risk of financial statement fraud, while 22 percent believed that improving fraud risk assessments would be most useful to their organizations in this effort.

The survey drew on responses from business executives who participated in a February 2010 Deloitte webcast.

President Obama reiterated support for stronger shareholder protections in  a speech on financial reform today at the Cooper Union in New York City.

In remarks prepared for delivery, the President reviewed causes of the recent financial crisis, pointedly declaring that some on Wall Street "forgot that behind every dollar traded or leveraged, there is family looking to buy a house, pay for an education, open a business, or save for retirement."

And, he declared in what's likely to be the most widely quoted sound bite, "A free market was never meant to be a free license to take whatever you can get, however you can get it."

The speech reviewed a number of changes being considered in Congress, and said criticism of the proposals as including future taxpayer bailouts was "not factually accurate."

Concerning shareholder governance issues, the President said "these Wall Street reforms will give shareholders new power in the financial system.  They'll get a say on pay: a voice with respect to the  salaries and bonuses awarded to top executives.  And the SEC will have the authority to give shareholders more say in corporate elections, so that investors and pension holders have a stronger role in determining who manages the companies in which they've placed their savings."

The full text of President Obama's remarks is available here.

Despite the economic recession, 59 percent of those responding said they plan to spend the same or more on products from socially responsible companies.

The second annual Corporate Social Responsibility Perceptions Survey was conducted by research-based consultancy Penn Schoen Berland in partnership with brand consulting firm Landor Associates and strategic communications firm Burson-Marsteller.  The results are based on 1,001 online interviews with the general public in the U.S. conducted in mid-February 2010.

The survey found that 75 percent of consumers say it is important for companies in each of the 14 industries tested to be socially responsible. Of those industries, Food, Consumer Goods and Retailers were perceived as performing best, while Financial Services, Healthcare and Media were perceived as performing worst.

Food giant General Mills was perceived to be the most responsible of 64 tested brands.

The survey found that more than half (55%) of consumers are unsure about the meaning of “corporate social responsibility.”  Of those who do know what “CSR” means, 20% percent said it involves “giving back to the community” while 19% say it is about “self-regulation and accountability.” Responsible environmental (16%) and employment (16%) practices were seen as the top ways to be socially responsible, the survey found.

Seventy-eight percent of employees are “unclear or unaware” of their employers’ CSR activities, according to the survey.  One third of workers said they would take a pay cut to work for a socially responsible firm.  About one half (49%) of 18-24 year old employees would take a pay cut to work at a socially responsible firm compared with 33% of 35-39 year olds and 25% of employees 65 years of age and older, the survey found.

The report from the World Business Council for Business Development (WBCSD) - Vision 2050: The New Agenda for Business – calls on businesses around the world to “develop strategies that would enable a global population of some 9 billion people to live well within the resources of the planet by 2050.”

A group of twenty-nine companies - led by Alcoa, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Storebrand and Syngenta – helped develop the report, which focuses on “the roles that business must play over the next few decades to enable society to move toward being sustainable.”

Alcoa Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Dr. Mohammad A. Zaidi, who co-chaired the 18-month project, said: “The world already has the knowledge, science, technologies, skills and financial resources needed to achieve Vision 2050. However, concerted global action in the next decade will be required to bring these capabilities and resources together, putting the world on the path to sustainability.”

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) is a CEO-led, global association of some 200 companies dealing exclusively with business and sustainable development. Members are drawn from more than 36 countries and 22 major industrial sectors.

The Vision 2050 report identifies a “critical pathway” that includes:

• Addressing the development needs of billions of people, enabling education and economic empowerment, particularly of women, and developing radically more eco-efficient solutions, lifestyles and behavior;
• Incorporating the cost of externalities, starting with carbon, ecosystem services and water;
• Doubling of agricultural output without increasing the amount of land or water used;
• Halting deforestation and increasing yields from planted forests;
• Halving carbon emissions worldwide (based on 2005 levels) by 2050, with greenhouse gas emissions peaking around 2020 through a shift to low-carbon energy systems and highly improved demand-side energy efficiency;
• Providing universal access to low carbon mobility; and
• Delivering a four-to-tenfold improvement in the use of resources and materials.

"Making these changes – and more – will enable us to consume just over one planet’s worth of ecological resources in 2050, as opposed to the 2.3 planets we will be using if we continue on the business-as-usual path we are on today,” the report says.

Vision 2050 suggests that the “transformation ahead” represents “vast opportunities” in a broad range of business segments as the global challenges of growth, urbanization, scarcity and environmental change become “the key strategic drivers” for business in the coming decade.

In natural resources, health and education alone, the broad order of magnitude of some of these could be around US$ 0.5-1.5 trillion per annum in 2020, rising to between US$ 3-10 trillion per annum in 2050 at today’s prices, which is around 1.5-4.5% of world GDP in 2050, according to the report.

WBCSD said project member companies on Vision 2050 were Accenture, Alcoa, Allianz, ArcelorMittal, The Boeing Company, Duke Energy Corporation, E.ON, Eskom, Evonik Industries, FALCK Group, Fortum Corporation, GDF SUEZ, GrupoNueva, Holcim, Infosys Technologies, Osaka Gas Co., PricewaterhouseCoopers, The Procter & Gamble Company, Rio Tinto, Royal Philips Electronics, Sony Corporation, Storebrand, Syngent  International, The Tokyo Electric Power Company, Toyota Motor Corporation, Umicore, Vattenfall, Volkswagen and Weyerhaeuser Company.

The Vision 2050 report can be downloaded here.

Last week's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, saw a major upgrade in the quantification of corporate sustainability with the unveiling of what I'll call the "second generation" of the Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World. When the Canadian corporate social responsibility magazine Corporate Knights teamed with the sustainable investing research firm Innovest to launch the list five years ago in Davos, the Global 100 turned heads by asserting the business relevance of sustainability while simultaneously meeting harsh criticism from the likes of sustainability guru Paul Hawken.

"My main point is that the criteria employed have little to do with sustainability as it is understood from a thermodynamic, biological point of view, that the term 'sustainable' is not defined by Corporate Knights or Innovest, and that the methodology is not transparent," Hawken told me. "The list does not advance sustainability because it cannot define, measure, or recognize it."

Now, the Global 100 methodology has finally gotten a major face-lift that addresses these critiques. Perhaps most importantly, the list included what the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) calls "sustainability context," which frames corporate progress in relation to a defined sustainability goal that needs to be met if our culture is to survive and thrive. The Global 100 chose resource efficiency improvements as its sustainability goal, using a "factor four" yardstick. A self-admittedly "crude" rule of thumb first proposed by Hunter and Amory Lovins in their 1998 book by that name, the notion holds that we need to improve resource productivity by 400 percent (or a factor of four) over the next two decades in order to get back within the earth's carrying capacity - an assertion subsequently supported by Lord Nicholas Stern and McKinsey. Using 2006 as a starting point, the Global 100 assesses whether companies are upping resource efficiency by six percent per year, the rate needed to reach factor four by 2026.

"While the majority of company-reported resource use data is unaudited, it is notable that 71 per cent of the 2010 Global 100 companies who report such information meet the test (six percent per annum resource productivity improvements) of being on a path toward sustainable resource use . . .," the Global 100 blog states.

Bill Baue

This is an important step in improving corporate sustainability ratings, but it falls short of taking a "thermodynamic, biological point of view." Measurements such as resource efficiency often express environmental impacts in financial terms, such as GDP per unit of emission - mixing apples and oranges. In contrast, true sustainability indicators compare apples to apples, measuring company-specific environmental impacts in terms of larger environmental limits, such as corporate emissions compared to global carbon capacity, assessing companies' proportional contribution toward meeting collective targets.

In this regard, the Global 100 represents a first step beyond first-generation sustainability metrics, which bordered on irrelevance, as they were untethered to a specific social or environmental goal that could objectively be defined as sustainable. Such first-wave sustainability claims may even be counter-productive, wooing us into thinking that corporate sustainability initiatives are making a difference, when in fact they may be lulling us into complacency with good intentions that have no chance of meeting social and environmental targets necessary for survival. Whether the Global 100 represents a true second generation effort, with "sustainability context" embedded at its core, is up in the air.

The other important step the Global 100 took this year involves transparency. Previously, the list relied on Innovest data, which is necessarily proprietary so the sustainable investing research firm could make a buck. The Global 100 took a two-step approach to free itself from the black box and "open the kimono." First, it selected the top ten percent of sustainable investment portfolios from the Global Sustainability Research Alliance (comprised of ten top sustainable investing research providers, such as Goldman Sachs GS SUSTAIN, EIRIS, and RiskMetrics, which use proprietary research) to constitute a beginning universe of some 3,000 companies. The Corporate Knights Research Group then applied its own set of 10 key performance indicators (such as carbon, energy, waste, and water productivity, as well as board diversity and CEO-to-worker pay disparity) to whittle down to the final list of 100.

While this innovative solution addresses the research methodology transparency conundrum, it doesn't necessarily solve the corporate transparency problem. To address this, the Global 100 added an equally weighted eleventh indicator, covering corporate disclosure. In a blog post aptly titled "Opaque Transparency," sustainability reporting expert Elaine Cohen noted the irony of zero overlap between the top 10 companies in the Global 100 and the top 10 in the Global 100 for transparency.

"For me, and perhaps I am a little extreme, or obsessive, or passionate, or stupid, transparency is an essential core element in sustainability which serves to leverage and drive performance in many different ways. Where there is low transparency, there is low trust, low dialogue, low openness to innovation, and low attention to stakeholder needs," Cohen said. "Whilst I do not expect such a ranking to be based on transparency alone, I believe that some degree of overlap would make this ranking more credible."

Cohen hit upon what I would call the "Oekom dilemma," so-named after the German sustainability research firm that came into criticism in the mid-2000s for downgrading company ratings for lack of disclosure, risking "inaccurate" assessment of companies with strong sustainability performance but weak transparency. Oekom's reasoning aligned with Cohen's: that sustainability without transparency is not truly sustainable. It will be interesting to see how the Global 100 handles this factor in the future.

Finally, the Global 100 added ranking this year. This seemingly superficial shift, moving away from an amorphous clump of a hundred sustainability leaders to a prioritized listing of best performers, may be the most satisfying change, fulfilling the human compulsion to create order out of chaos. It also sparks the competitive spirit, inspiring companies toward continuous improvement in sustainability performance as they vie for the top spot. Now that the list encourages companies to operate within at least some of the earth's thermodynamic limits, this competition may actually help us attain our salvation.

Bill Baue is Executive Director of Sea Change Media, and Executive Producer/Host of Sea Change Radio, a nationally syndicated show with a global podcast audience.  Disclosure: He has written for Corporate Knights.  This article was first published on CSRWire.