The topic of sustainability has become increasingly important for every company in recent years. Due to global warming and many other issues that have an impact on the environment, it is important for many customers that a company's product is manufactured sustainably or that the company operates sustainably in principle. But does sustainability also have an impact on the value of a company? First, the topic of sustainability is delineated and defined in the legal understanding of the European Union. The EU Green Deal and the requirements derived from it are discussed in detail. The EU taxonomy is also briefly explained in this section. Next, three sustainability ratings are presented that can be used to rate the sustainability of a company. These ratings are the Bloomberg ESG Data, the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the MSCI ESG Rating. As Bloomberg was used to collect the data for the empirical analysis, the Bloomberg ESG Data rating is used in this master's thesis. After determining the appropriate sustainability rating, a brief literature review is carried out to check whether similar value relevance studies have already been carried out on the topic. In the practical part of the thesis, the sample that is to lead to the collection of the data is defined at the beginning. Among other things, the countries from which the companies come and the industry sector in which they operate will be described. Once the sample has been determined and defined, a descriptive analysis is carried out in which the mean, median, minimum, maximum, range and standard deviation of the ESG score over the period from 2015 to 2022 are determined and interpreted. The main topic of the empirical analysis is the value relevance analysis of the sustainability rating. This makes it possible to determine whether the defined hypotheses can be disproved or upheld. This analysis is carried out for each year individually from 2015 to 2022, including the financial statements of the companies from 2022. Furthermore, the analysis is carried out with the values of the companies for the period 2015 to 2022 as a whole and also specifically related to the regions and sectors of the companies. At the end of the master's thesis, the results of the empirical analysis are briefly summarized once again in order to determine whether there is any relevance between the sustainability rating and the company value. The analysis shows that the correlation between value and ESG score has decreased over the years, but that the rating is relevant to value when looking at the entire period. If the companies are divided into regions, the ESG rating would be value-relevant in all regions. If the companies are divided into activity sectors, the result is different again. For the majority of sectors, there is no correlation between company value and ESG rating.
Nachhaltigkeitsrating und Auswirkung auf die finanzielle Performance von börsennotierten Unternehmen des EUROSTOXX600-Index
Fischlhammer, S. T. (Author). 2024
Student thesis: Master's Thesis