The Asian Sustainability Rating is a new investment tool which rates Asian companies based on over 50 selected environment, social and governance criteria. To date, coverage extends to the top 20 companies in 10 markets but, by mid 2010, this will extend to the top 500 companies in Asia ex-Japan, based on weighted free-float market capitalisation.

A panel of Asian sustainability experts has been formed to create investable sustainability universes (both relative and absolute) from which indices will be created. Investors will be able to use the data and universes to create sustainable investment products and the indices for benchmarking performance.

Companies can purchase rating data for peer group analysis and in order to monitor improvements in sustainability over time to validate CSR resource allocation.