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Environmental, social, and governance performance has attracted close attention around the world and is becoming a focus of many companies, investors, financial analysts, and accounting policy makers.This paper provides insight into how environmental and social performance is reflected in the market value of listed SIX 300 companies on OMX Stockholm. Applying the Ohlson valuation model, we express the market value of equity as a function of the book value of equity, accounting earnings, and environmental and social performance, where the last two variables are the proxies for other valuerelevant information. We test this model with data from the GES Investment Services® risk ratings that enable us to create a holistic view on the long-term extra-financial performance and to disaggregate the effects of various dimensions of environmental and social performance on stock prices. The evidence presented in this study finds support for the value relevance of environmental performance at both aggregated and sub-aggregated levels. In the social dimension, support is found for community and supplier relations. We contribute empirical findings to the current debate on the relations between environmental and social performance and shareholder value, and demonstrate the extra-financial value of environmental and social performance.

This paper analyses insider trading behaviour around annual and interim earnings announcements during changing legislative environments in Sweden from 1980 to 2003. Using a unique data set, we are able to explore the nature of insider trading patterns from unregulated to strongly regulated insider trading markets. We find limited evidence of opportunistic insider trading. Insiders seem to be reluctant to sell stocks before positive earnings announcements. They also tend to time their trades in conjunction with an immediate post-announcement period, i.e. "safety trading", which becomes more evident within stronger legislation environments. Some support for contrarian trading behaviour is also found.

In this paper, we examine if corporate insiders have other motives for trading besides exploitation of private information. Our results show that insiders’ portfolio re- balancing objectives, tax considerations and behavioral biases play the most important role in their trading decisions. We also find that insiders who have allocated a great (small) proportion of their wealth to insider stock sell more (less) before bad news earnings disclosures. Finally, insider selling is informative for future returns among those insiders who have the greatest proportion of wealth allocated to insider stocks.

Reporting of environmental information along with financial information has become an important research topic. Research to date has focused on the nature of the information reported by companies. This study extends prior research by examining the inclusion of environmental information by financial analysts in their research reports on companies in the chemical and in the oil and gas industries. Both companies and financial analysts are divided into subsets by geographic region, Europe and North America. Results show that only 35 per cent of financial analysts' reports have environmental information. Those reports that do have such information have more environmental information for North American companies than for European companies and analysts tend to report more information for companies in their regions. The chemical industry receives more attention, especially for downside information. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

This study shows how environmental information is used by financial analysts when valuing companies. Unlike the previous studies on analysts' perceptions, we use content analysis to examine the actual use of environmental information in valuations. Research reports from large investment banks in the USA and Europe are collected. The sample consists of reports from two industries, oil and chemicals, where the operations have a considerable impact on the environment. The results show that analysts do use environmental information in 35% of the valuations. Most of the information utilised is for environmental expenditures and risk assessment. For instance, the information about environmental provisions and emissions is of relative importance. We also find that analysts use environmental information not only for the evaluations of risk, but also for the assessment of the future upside potential when valuing chemical companies. They make use of this information to motivate the relative valuations.