Davos, Switzerland – The third annual ranking of the Global 100 most sustainable corporations in the world has been released by Corporate Knights Inc. and Innovest Strategic Value Advisors. The list includes five Canadian companies, four of which were on the previous lists in 2005 and 2006.

The list was announced at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The Global 100 companies are deemed ‘sustainable’ because they are better than their industry peers at managing the environmental, social and governance factors that have material, financial impacts on their business and affect their opportunities and risks. The ranking system is Innovest’s Intangible Value Assessment platform, which combines more than 120 performance factors, including innovation capacity, product liability, governance, human capital, emerging market, and environmental opportunities and risk.

Canadian companies on the 2007 list are: Alcan Inc., Enbridge Inc., Royal Bank Of Canada, Sun Life Financial Inc., Transcanada Corp. The only newcomer is Transcanada, which was added because of its commitment to renewable energy, while the others have been on the list since its inception in 2005.

Most of the firms on the list are from Europe, a reflection of a stronger commitment to corporate responsibility among those countries, say the study’s authors. The United Kingdom leads the way with 24 companies on the list, followed by the United States with 19 and Japan with 13. Approximately one third of the companies are new from last year’s list.

The list includes firms from a variety of sectors, including oil and gas, financials, utilities, manufacturing, and consumer goods.

One of the key features of the Global 100 is the linkage of environmental, social, and governance issues with financial performance. A compiled list of the 2006 Global 100 tracked their performance over time (from 2000 to the end of 2005) against the benchmark MSCI World Index, showing that the ranked companies significantly outperformed the market.

Over a one year period, the Global 100 outperformed the MSCI by nearly 13.5%, while the outperformance over three and five years was 5.47% and 7.11%, respectively.

“G100 companies are proactive in their response to investor and other stakeholder demands for better management of risks, such as climate change,” says lead analyst and Innovest CEO Matthew Kiernan. “We believe that these sustainability leaders will create significant long-term value through innovation, lower costs, better employee recruiting and retention and consumer choice. G100 companies will likely continue to out-perform the competition as a result.”

Discussions at the private dinner held to announce the list focused on the theme: “The Investor is the New Regulator,” with a focus on how the wealth of financial markets can be harnessed to power the next industrial revolution.

“Increased environmental scrutiny and regulatory action are opening the floodgates for trillions of dollars of investment capital to flow into companies with a green edge, and the G100 are well-placed to surf this long wave,” said Toby Heaps, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine.

Canadian-based Corporate Knights Inc. publishes a corporate responsibility magazine of the same name. Innovest Strategic Value Advisors is an international investment advisory firm specializing in analyzing “non-traditional” drivers of risk and shareholder value including companies’ performance on environmental, social and strategic governance issues.

For more information on the list, visit www.global100.org.