On Monday, 15 November, Unilever (NYSE:UL) unveiled a business model overhaul that was 12 months in the planning. The core strategy is sustainability.

Here is how the Guardian describes it:

The initiative will cover not just Unilever's greenhouse gas emissions, waste and water use – but the impact caused by its suppliers and consumers, from agricultural growers to the packaging and waste water produced by consumers of Unilever brands. The Anglo-Dutch group also intends to improve the nutritional quality of its food products – with cuts in salt, saturated fats, sugar and calories – and link more than 500,000 smallholder farmers and small scale distributors in developing countries to its supply chain.

Looking at the reputation metrics, there is no indication that the market has been anticipating a major announcement of a strategic shift designed to increase enterprise value along with corporate reputation. Over the trailing twelve months, the Steel City Re Corporate Reputation Index rank has slipped progressively from the 58th percentile to the 34th percentile relative to the 25 peers in the Food: Major/Diversified sector. (The top ranked firms are currently HJ Heinz (NYSE:HNZ); Kellog Co. (NYSE:K) and TreeHouse Foods (NYSE:THS)). During this period, the company's return on equity has underperformed the median of its peer group by 2.75%. As of 11 November, the exponentially weighted moving average volatility of its Index ranking has dropped to 7.6%, but the Index velocity and vector are overall negative at -3% and -6% respectively.

The sector as a whole as shown a decrease in its median reputation ranking as well as a progressive decrease in the variance within the group. Last, the entire sector is heavily leveraged with the median intangible asset value fraction in excess of 100%. Unilver's intangible asset fraction of 118% is marginally greater than the median of 114%.

We'll be following Unilever to see how its sustainability strategy pans out.

The New York Times reports today  that major lenders are backing off from companies that present the potential for material environmental risks. It's a reputational thing.

According to the report by Tom Zeller, "After years of legal entanglements arising from environmental messes and increased scrutiny of banks that finance the dirtiest industries, several large commercial lenders are taking a stand on industry practices that they regard as risky to their reputations and bottom lines." Major financial institutions now factoring sustainability issues into their lending decisions include Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC), Credit Suisse (NYSE:CS), Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), JPMorgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), Citibank (NYSE:C), HSBC (NYSE:HBC), and Rabobank (AMS:ROBA).

In the parlance of the Society, it appears that sustainability policies and practices are emerging as material credit risk factors. And for those of you who were wondering what all the fuss is about at the Society, this is an example of what we mean by "intangible asset finance."

As April came to a close, Walmart Stores Inc. (NYSE:WMT) received bad news. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that the plaintiffs alleging unfair labor practices against female employees (read, unethical practices) can head to court as a class action. This decision transforms a nine year old matter into the largest class-action employment lawsuit in U.S. history.

Besides being a welcome break from the headline risk crises on safety, quality and ethics facing BP (NYSE:BP), Toyota (NYSE:TM), and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), the issue provides an opportunity to test a central hypothesis held by the Society and described in detail in the book, Mission Intangible. This is it.

Reputation value is the sum of the value contributed by six key intangible assets (business processes) governing ethics, quality, innovation, safety, sustainability, and security. The assets create value cooperatively like the stones in a Roman arch; loss of any one key stone can destroy significant value.

Let’s also recap what is value. Market capitalization is the obvious one. More to the point, companies with superior reputations have enhanced pricing power, lower operating costs, lower credit costs, and higher earnings multiples. It's that simple.

Walmart has invested significant time and effort into building authentic credentials and a reputation for excellence in sustainability practices. Is its reputation for sustainability sufficient to compensate for its less-than-stellar reputation in labor (ethics)? The hypothesis would suggest that they are independent, and that failure in either could erase the reputation value created by the other. Let’s look at the numbers.



The Steel City Re Corporate Reputation Index, also described in greater detail in the book, Mission Intangible, shows that Walmart’s reputation ranking has slipped from the coveted #1 slot of the 100th percentile among 39 peers in the multiline retail sector. Over the past 16 months, Walmart has moved from the top ranking to the 94th percentile. Economically, its return on equity has underperformed both the median return of its peers (by 42%) and the S&P500 benchmark index.



In contrast, Target Inc. (NYSE:TGT), a rival whose charting in this Mission Intangible blog back in June 2009 has been the most popular post ever, raised its reputation ranking among this peer group from the 46th percentile to the 94th percentile. At the same time, it outperformed the median of its peers (by 27%) and the S&P500 index.



Also for contrast look at Walgreen Co. (NYSE:WAG). During this period, their reputation ranking rose from the 69th percentile to the 81st percentile, and it outperformed its peer group by a narrow 2%, but comfortably beat the S&P500 Index.



Last, note that the multiline retail sector, as a group, slipped in its median reputation ranking relative to the broad market. Furthermore, the variance among the individual companies comprising this sector narrowed. The sector's median reputation ranking drop stands out dramatically in contrast against Target's reputation ranking rise.

Next Friday, May 7, the Society's monthly Mission Intangible Monthly Briefing will feature Scott Childers from the Walt Disney Company (NYSE:DIS) who is calling for holistic supply chain vendor management, and Bob Rittereiser from Zhi Verden whose Global Trademaster™ product provides total supply chain visibility. A note this past Monday in the Wall Street Journal explains why this is so important.

On Monday U.S. Federal, state and local law enforcement officials, part of the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center said they made their biggest-ever seizures of counterfeit goods this month in two operations that netted more than $240 million in a sweep of more than 30 U.S. cities. Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced the double-barreled operation on Monday to coincide with World Intellectual Property Day.

Commemorating a day to heighten awareness of intellectual property with arrests may not be festive, but it is appropriate. Fake goods do more than rob intellectual property owners of revenue. Fake goods raise the specter of a full range of reputation-linked issues that go beyond cash flow to create risk in areas as  diverse as ethics (international labor standards), quality, safety, security, and sustainability. The article further notes that next week, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service will begin targeting counterfeit goods that could get into the military supply chain. The U.S. General Services Administration will target fake goods in the federal civilian supply chain.

To target effectively, one needs intelligence. According to Mr. Rittereiser, Zhi Verden’s Global Trademaster™ provides that intelligence; according to Mr. Childers, having that intelligence is a necessary component for world class supply chain management.

Act on your intellectual curiosity!

If the above issues pique your interest, here are several things you can do right now:

1. Register free of charge for the next IAFS Mission Intangible Monthly Briefing set for Friday 7 May at 12h00 EDT. The conversation will feature Scott Childers from Walt Disney and Bob Rittereiser from Zhi Verden on “Process-driven reputation risk in supply chains”
2. Purchase the book, Mission: Intangible. Managing risk and reputation to create enterprise value, at the IAFS Store (or any online book retailer) 
3. Become a member of the Intangible Asset Finance Society.
4. Join our community on Linked-In.

Stakeholders own a company’s reputation, and their behaviors are outward expressions of their true feelings.

The behaviors that are relevant to this Society are those that create enterprise value. Among them are acceptance of higher price points, extension of superior credit and labor terms, lower operating friction, higher earnings multiples, and lower credit costs. For readers of this blog or the recently published book, Mission: Intangible, this is old news.

More to the point, in Mission: Intangible, we noted that mutual funds comprising companies with reputations for advancing social values tended to underperform their benchmarks. Among the six major intangible assets that underpin reputation (ethics, innovation, quality, safety, sustainability and security), only excellence in sustainability seemed not to correlate with superior economic performance.

So from time to time, we revisit the issue of the value of green. The triggers for our current revisit are three:

First, a blog note from a friend of the Society, author, and marketing consultant Jon Baskin in which he noted that shareholders at Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)  recently defeated a new corporate social responsibility initiative.

Second, is the growing movement to create a third class of corporate structure – the “beneficial corporation.” Vermont currently leads this movement with legislation that would allow companies to both (a) return gains to investors and (b) provide social good for the community. The law would give “for profit” companies legal cover to pursue societal goals that may yield less profit. The Vermont initiative is driven by the remorse of socially-conscious shareholders who supported Ben & Jerry’s acceptance of Unilever NV’s (NYSE:UN) buyout offer under threat of litigation from financially-motivated shareholders.

Third is an advertisement of comparative derision that caught our eye in the Wall Street Journal. In the ad run by Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL), they contrast the following under the headline of “IQ Test”: (their) Sun SPARC computer that run 7x faster versus IBM’s (NYSE:IBM) fastest computer that consumes 6x energy. They ask the consumer tongue in cheek to choose: Faster Computers or Smarter Planets.

We believe that the question of being green or being profitable is a false choice. At the same time, it is self evident that the transfer of corporate profits into social benefits both within and outside the company will at some point reduce cash flows available to shareholders. We will continue to observe and share what we see.

Heads Up - Date Change

The Mission: Intangible Monthly Briefing for April 2010 will be held one week later than usual in deference to those who celebrate Good Friday. On 9 April 2010 at 12h00 EDT, the second Friday of the month, we will host a conversation featuring incoming Integrity and Corporate Responsibility Committee Chairman Paul Liebman from Dell  (NASDAQ:DELL) and IA Value Signaling Committee Chairman Jon Low from Predictiv. The title for the one hour moderated discussion is: Ethics - A valuable intangible asset? Mary Adams from Intellectual Capital Advisors hosts.

As always, registration for this popular series is complimentary and slides will be available for download in advance of the event. To register now, click here.

Join Us

If the above intrigues you or challenges you to learn more, look no further. The Intangible Asset Finance Society wants to be your business resource. Join us and be part of an organization that provides a wealth of educational materials, including a new book, to further your executive career, and exciting monthly conferences such as the upcoming one on ethics mentioned above.

Operating costs such as internal frictional costs are the bane of any executive accountable for the bottom line. True, they can be cut – usually through workforce reductions – but the long-term effects on surviving employees may include net losses in productivity and even greater internal frictional costs.

Here is good news, executives. There is a proven strategy for lowering internal frictional costs. This is it. Be ethical. Be sustainable. Be safe. And be known for it.

In other words, all you need to do is apply the best practices found in other companies that are superior stewards of their intangible assets – the business processes that lead to reputations for ethics, safety, quality, innovation, security, and sustainability. Companies that follow these practices tend to out perform their peers and better reward their shareholders.

The relationship between these business processes, reputation, internal frictional costs, and value creation are illustrated on a webpage of one of our members, Steel City Re, a leader in risk and reputation management. The latest data affirming these principles comes from Kelly Services, Inc. (NASDAQ: KELYA, KELYB), a world leader in workforce management services and human resources solutions.

According to the Kelly study announced late last month,

Major public issues such as a company’s reputation for strong ethical practices have become critical factors in choosing where to work, even to the point where many employees are prepared to sacrifice pay or promotion in order to work for organizations that are actively engaged in good social responsibility practices. More specifically, concerns about ethical behavior outweigh concerns about the environment by all generations, when making employment choices.

Here are some other key findings:

• Almost 90 percent of respondents say they are more likely to work for an organization that is considered ethically and socially responsible, something that is consistent across all age generations.
• 80 percent are more likely to work for an organization that is considered environmentally responsible, a figure that is considerably higher among older age groups.
• In deciding where to work, an organization’s reputation for ethical conduct is considered ‘very important’ by 65 percent of Gen Y, 72 percent of Gen X, and 77 percent of baby boomers.
• 46 percent of Gen Y would be prepared to forego pay or promotion to work for an organization with a good reputation, rising to 48 percent for Gen X and 53 percent for baby boomers.
• In deciding where to work, policies to address global warming are considered ‘very important’ by 31 percent of Gen Y, rising to 35 percent among Gen X and 36 percent for baby boomers.

Here's the action part. Want to cut operating costs? Ramp up your company’s reputation for ethics, sustainability, safety, etc. Become a superior risk and reputation manager.

Want to know how to do it? Join the Intangible Asset Finance Society. We provide a forum for executives to discover better ways to increase the visibility, transparency, and value of intangible assets. These assets comprise 50% of the average company's value. Click here for information on membership and affiliate with us on LinkedIn.

In the Society’s pantheon of intangible assets that create enterprise value, one has defied efforts to build for it a universally compelling business case. Sustainability, unlike ethics, innovation, quality, safety and security, is not a practice that in our experience reliably has created enterprise value for its practitioners. Further, if one subscribes to the theory that there is wisdom in crowds, than the murkiness surrounding the value of sustainability persists. This is why. According to a recent survey of 1,400 CFOs from a stratified random sample of U.S. companies with 20 or more employees, two-thirds of CFOs don't expect to boost sustainability efforts in next 12 months.

When asked whether they expect their companies’ emphasis on green initiatives to increase, decrease or remain the same in the next 12 months, 68 percent of chief financial officers (CFOs) interviewed said they anticipate no changes. More than a quarter (28 percent), however, said they expect an increased focus on the issue.

When we first saw this report, we assumed that those expecting to increase their focus would be companies that distributed product through Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT). More generally, we expected retailers and and their supply chains would be investing in green to conform with Wal-Mart’s sustainability requirements – or at least remain competitive.

We were not wrong. Looking horizontally at the data, while overall 28% expected to increase investments, 33% of the CFOs from companies in the retail sector expected to do so. Furthermore, while overall 5.15% expected to increase investments significantly, 6.3% of the CFOs from the retail sector were gearing up for bigger green initiatives.

However, we were surprised by some of the findings. First, the sector from which a plurality of CFOs expected to increase investments the most was finance – nearly 36%. At the other end of the spectrum was transportation – only 19%. However, nearly half of those in the transportation sector expected to make significant increases.

Growth and/or maintaining the status quo were not on everyone’s agenda. Sectors planning to cutback, according to the CFOs surveyed, include business services, construction and – ready for this – retail at 5.2, 4.8, and 3.8% respectively.

The survey was developed by Robert Half Management Resources.

Nell Minow, editor and co-founder of the Corporate Library, a provider of corporate governance research, ratings and investment risk analysis, penned a Financial Times op ed piece on 2 October suggesting that going forward, fund managers and analysts will look at four new fundamental elements “that will become as important as cash flow and return on investment.” To no surprise around here, these four comprise intangible asset metrics and business processes. While we do not necessarily agree with Minow's views, her comments are worth noting. This is what she wrote, briefly:

1. Accounting: Investors will demand better information about human and intellectual capital, risk management processes, and sustainability. Our friend, Ken Jarboe of the Athena Alliance, has been delving into this topic for years. You can link to the Athena Alliance here.

2. Boards of Directors: Investors will demand greater competence and selfless engagement from members of the Boards of their companies. They will want from Directors what private equity firms demand of early stage company executives: "skin in the game." This notion compresses to the concept of Governance, about which the Society has organized a Committee chaired by Cathy Reese. Without leaving with us a pound of flesh, you can download her 6 Feb 09 "how to" presentation on this subject from our Events page.

3. Compensation: We read Minow’s comments in this light: executive compensation must better align the interests of senior management with the long-term interests of the firm and its stakeholders. Compensation processes, writes Minow, are a key indicator of risk. While we still see benefits in incentives and material compensation, notwithstanding the growing chant of mobs with pitchforks, we like the part in Minow's piece about processes and risk management. In fact, we like anything that links risk management to overall corporate reputation. This is especially when a company uses financial instruments to signal superior risk management. The Society presented a Mission:Intangible Monthly Briefing on Risk and Reputation Management 10 July 09 that you can download from our Events page.

4. Investors: Going forward, investors will look to see if the existing investors are providing sufficient oversight to ensure that the Board of Directors is providing sufficient oversight to ensure that management is providing sufficient oversight of the firm’s operations. Did you follow that? The business process is oversight; the intangible asset affected is trust. To us, the take home message is this. The greater the trust (a product of transparency), the less oversight burden for all. And how can investors signal trust? According to Minow, investors can signal trust by being "overweight relative to the index." In other words, extra skin in the game. See #2 and #3 above. 

The bottom line is this. Investors will seek companies that have their business processes under better control, can quantify and report the value of these proceses to their stakeholders, can manage their risks, and can signal their material conformance with the preceding  through non-traditional channels. The Society provides a working environment for best-practices discovery for executives seeking to accomplish the above. Won't you join us?

During the 6 February 2009 MISSION:INTANGIBLE Monthly Briefing, Fish & Richardson’s Cathy Reese, who chairs the Society’s IA Corporate Governance Committee, indicated that under Delaware Law, Directors and Officers had a Duty of Care to oversee the management of the business processes that help establish reputation. She noted that absent oversight systems, Members of the Board could be personally liable to shareholders for adverse events that impaired a company’s reputation.

Cathy’s warning of shareholder-driven exposure is just the beginning. Now companies are seeking restitution, too. According to the newspaper Deutsche Welle, after spending nearly 2.5 billion euros to cover legal bills and fines stemming from an international bribery scandal, Munich-based Siemens AG (NYSE:SI) is seeking payments from its former leadership team. Siemens was investigated for paying 1.3 billion euros in kickbacks between 2003 and 2006 to potential buyers in 12 countries, including Italy, Greece, Russia and Nigeria. In Germany and in the United States, the company was found guilty of corruption and ordered to pay combined fines of just over a billion euros. After the 2006 investigation, Siemens then accused some of its former managers of having failed to stop illegal practices and wide-ranging bribery.

It gets more interesting. The Financial Times reports that some of Siemens’ investors have threatened to sue the company if it did not claim damages from its former managers.

The value of risk and reputation management at the board level should be painfully obvious. The consequences of failing to manage a firm’s business processes for ethics, sustainability, innovation, quality, safety, security, etc. – the drivers of reputation – can place officers and directors at great personal peril. Yes, it’s personal.

We dedicate most of the time and effort of this communication channel to a discussion of the intangible assets that underpin reputation. Usually, the subject matter involves corporate behavior.  Awareness of issues associated with corporate behavior may come to light because of government regulatory action. More often, it is the result of NGO-driven publicity. In a break with tradition, the subject of today's note comprises NGO transparency. 

An on-line Wall Street Journal op-ed posted earlier this week alleged that Human Rights Watch, a 30-year old NGO dedicated to defending and protecting human rights, sent its leading Middle East official, Sarah Leah Whitson, to extract money from potential Saudi donors by bragging about the group's "battles" with the "pro-Israel pressure groups." The ongoing dialogue appears to affirm the allegations.

NGOs are important actors in both the geopolitical and commercial worlds. They encourage and monitor corporate compliance with many of the best practices comprising key business processes that underpin reputations for ethics, safety, and sustainability. They are respected and feared by much of the business community. Their primary tool is the threat of headline risk. Their moral authority depends on their reputation for independence. Their value is ephemeral. Loss of reputation and moral authority can be catastrophic.

Ronelle Burger and Trudy Owens from the University of Nottingham recently published a study that was motivated by “widespread calls for NGOs to become more accountable and transparent.” They conclude that “… NGOs with antagonistic relations with the government may be more likely to hide information and be dishonest.“

Human Rights watch has an antagonistic relationship with the Israeli government. The Israeli government wasted no time questioning HRW's "moral compass. "

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?