[April 09, 2010]

Corporate Responsibility Magazine to Announce First-Ever Black List® - the Russell 1000's Least-Transparent Companies

Corporate Responsibility Magazine, publishers of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens List®, will hold a press conference on April 14 at 10:30am EDT (teleconference) to announce its inaugural Black List, the Russell 1000 companies who tie for bottom ranking in transparency and corporate citizenship. The 2010 Black List® features 30 companies, representing some of America's best-known brands.

A major headline in the Black List® story is that while the 100 Best companies' 3-year average total return is a positive 2.37 percent, and the Russell 1000 companies' return averaged a negative 5.4 percent, the 28 companies on the Black List® that have been included in the Russell 1000 for three years show a negative 7.38 percent average 3-year return.

In the words of CR Magazine editor in chief, Dirk Olin: "The 100 Best Corporate Citizens List, recognized by PR Week as one of America's top three most-important business rankings, represents the gold medal in stakeholder respect. The Black List® is the new standard in stakeholder disrespect."

Both the 100 Best Corporate Citizens List® and Black List® rank Russell 1000 companies based on 349 data points of 100 percent publicly-available data in seven categories. And while 100 Best companies often feature 250 of those data points in publicly-available places, Black List® companies tie for last in how much information they disclose about their practices in Environment, Climate Change, Human Rihts, Philanthropy, Employee Relations, Financial Performance, and Governance.

Both the Black List® and 100 Best List are selected from among the large-cap Russell 1000 companies. The 100 Best List's open and transparent methodology is governed by the 100 Best Corporate Citizens List Methodology Committee of the Corporate Responsibility Officers Association (CROA). The publicly-available data for both the 100 Best and Black List® comes from environment, social and governance investment data provider IW Financial. The 100 Best List methodology is published in the Jan/Feb 2010 issue of Corporate Responsibility Magazine and can be found online at www.thecro.com. The 100 Best List was first published in 1999 in Business Ethics Magazine and was first published in Corporate Responsibility Magazine in 2007.

The complete Black List® will be released at media teleconference April 14 at 10:30 am EDT. Media can register for the teleconference by contacting [email protected] or [email protected].

About Corporate Responsibility Magazine, CRO Association and CRO Summits

20,000-subscriber Corporate Responsibility Magazine (www.thecro.com) is publisher of the 11^th annual 100 Best Corporate Citizens List®, among America's three most-important business rankings according to PR Week, and the Black List®. Over 200 large capitalization corporations and institutions are members of the Corporate Responsibility Officers Association (www.CROAssociation.org), representing 1,200+ individuals dedicated to increasing professionalization of corporate responsibility standards and practices. CROA has a formal partnership with NYSE Euronext. Corporate Responsibility Officer Summits (www.crosummit.com) are recognized worldwide as the leading events for corporate responsibility practitioners. CR Magazine, CROA and CRO Summits are managed by SharedXpertise Media LLC, with offices in Edison NJ, Cambridge UK, Brussels BE, and Singapore.

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