It turns out that positive climate change news coverage is good for business despite long-held beliefs to the contrary.
In its first report for a new research product suite for corporate clients, Deutsche Bank scoured five million pages of news and found that positive climate-change coverage helped stocks beat the market.
The report found that companies that experience positive sustainability press saw share price outperformance of 1.4 per cent per year over the MSCI World Index, an outperformance of 26 per cent.
Programming their new artificial intelligence platform Alpha-Dig, developed by the bank’s Data Innovation Group (dbDIG), the bank analyzed stock impact and mapped company stock prices after filtering though a staggering five million pages of company announcements released by 1,600 MSCI World companies over the last 20 years, in addition to every Dow Jones news article written.
“As government regulation on the issue continues to increase, climate change mitigation will become a normal part of doing business,” said the report. “Customers have spoken, investors have spoken. Those companies that do not listen will certainly be left behind.”