IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/aue/wpaper/2218.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Impact of ESG Performance on the Financial Performance of European Area Companies: An Empirical Examination

Author

Listed:
  • Phoebe Koundouri
  • Nikitas Pittis

    (University of Piraeus, Greece)

  • Angelos Plataniotis

Abstract

Achieving climate neutrality, as dictated by international agreements such as the Paris Agreement, the United Nations Agenda 2030 and the European Green Deal, requires the conscription of all parts of society. The business world and, in particular, large enterprises have a leading role in this effort. Businesses can contribute to this effort by establishing a reporting and operating framework according to specific Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) criteria. The interest of companies in the ESG framework has become more intense in the recent years, as they recognize that apart from an improved reputation, ESG criteria can add value to them and help them to become more effective in their functioning. In particular, large European companies are legally obligated by the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD-Directive 2014/95/EU) to disclose non-financial information on how they deal with social and environmental issues. In the literature, there are discussions on the extent to which a good ESG performance affects a company's profitability, valuation, capital efficiency and risk. The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically whether a relationship between good ESG performance and the good financial condition of companies can be documented. For a sample of the top 50 European companies in terms of ESG performance (STOXX Europe ESG Leaders 50 Index), covering a wide range of sectors, namely Automobiles, Consumer Products, Energy, Financial Services, Manufacturing, etc., we first reviewed their reportings to see which ESG framework they use to monitor their performance. Next, we examined whether there is a pattern of better financial performance compared to other large European corporations. Our results showed that such a connection seems to exist at least for some specific parameters, while for others, such a claim cannot be supported.

Suggested Citation

  • Phoebe Koundouri & Nikitas Pittis & Angelos Plataniotis, 2022. "The Impact of ESG Performance on the Financial Performance of European Area Companies: An Empirical Examination," DEOS Working Papers 2218, Athens University of Economics and Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:aue:wpaper:2218
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://wpa.deos.aueb.gr/docs/2022.Impact.ESG.Performance.pdf
    File Function: First version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tim Verheyden & Robert G. Eccles & Andreas Feiner, 2016. "ESG for All? The Impact of ESG Screening on Return, Risk, and Diversification," Journal of Applied Corporate Finance, Morgan Stanley, vol. 28(2), pages 47-55, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Müller-Stewens, Günter & Stonig, Joachim, 2023. "Auf dem Weg zum Stakeholder-Kapitalismus: Merkmale und Konsequenzen einer sich verändernden institutionellen Logik," Die Unternehmung - Swiss Journal of Business Research and Practice, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, vol. 77(4), pages 316-333.
    2. Marta Szczepańczyk & Paweł Nowodziński & Adam Sikorski, 2023. "ESG Strategy and Financial Aspects Using the Example of an Oil and Gas Midstream Company: The UNIMOT Group," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(18), pages 1-24, September.
    3. Irene Aldridge & Payton Martin, 2022. "ESG In Corporate Filings: An AI Perspective," Papers 2212.00018, arXiv.org.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Choi, Gahyun & Park, Kwangyeol & Yi, Eojin & Ahn, Kwangwon, 2023. "Price fairness: Clean energy stocks and the overall market," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    2. Amrou Awaysheh & Randall A. Heron & Tod Perry & Jared I. Wilson, 2020. "On the relation between corporate social responsibility and financial performance," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(6), pages 965-987, June.
    3. Muneer Shaik & Mohd Ziaur Rehman, 2023. "The Dynamic Volatility Connectedness of Major Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Stock Indices: Evidence Based on DCC-GARCH Model," Asia-Pacific Financial Markets, Springer;Japanese Association of Financial Economics and Engineering, vol. 30(1), pages 231-246, March.
    4. Husain, Shaiara & Sohag, Kazi & Wu, Yanrui, 2022. "The response of green energy and technology investment to climate policy uncertainty: An application of twin transitions strategy," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    5. Leonardo Becchetti & Emanuele Bobbio & Federico Prizia & Lorenzo Semplici, 2022. "Going Deeper into the S of ESG: A Relational Approach to the Definition of Social Responsibility," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-22, August.
    6. Costanza Torricelli & Beatrice Bertelli, 2022. "ESG screening strategies and portfolio performance: how do they fare in periods of financial distress?," Centro Studi di Banca e Finanza (CEFIN) (Center for Studies in Banking and Finance) 0087, Universita di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Dipartimento di Economia "Marco Biagi".
    7. Lööf, Hans & Sahamkhadam, Maziar & Stephan, Andreas, 2022. "Is Corporate Social Responsibility investing a free lunch? The relationship between ESG, tail risk, and upside potential of stocks before and during the COVID-19 crisis," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 46(PB).
    8. Ben Ameur, Hachmi & Ftiti, Zied & Louhichi, Waël & Yousfi, Mohamed, 2024. "Do green investments improve portfolio diversification? Evidence from mean conditional value-at-risk optimization," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    9. Yue Qi & Xiaolin Li, 2020. "On Imposing ESG Constraints of Portfolio Selection for Sustainable Investment and Comparing the Efficient Frontiers in the Weight Space," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(4), pages 21582440209, December.
    10. Patel, Pankaj C. & Pearce, John A. & Oghazi, Pejvak, 2021. "Not so myopic: Investors lowering short-term growth expectations under high industry ESG-sales-related dynamism and predictability," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 551-563.
    11. Christos Catiforis, 2022. "Post-pandemic inflation: Phillips Curve, trends, drivers and lessons," Economic Bulletin, Bank of Greece, issue 55, pages 43-65, July.
    12. Fatemi, Ali & Fooladi, Iraj & Sy, Oumar & Zaman, Ashraf, 2024. "Corporate headquarters relocation and CSR performance," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 89(PB), pages 622-637.
    13. Valeria Vannoni & Emanuele Ciotti, 2021. "Esg or Not Esg? A Benchmarking Analysis," International Journal of Business and Management, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 15(8), pages 152-152, July.
    14. Paolo Capelli & Federica Ielasi & Angeloantonio Russo, 2021. "Forecasting volatility by integrating financial risk with environmental, social, and governance risk," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(5), pages 1483-1495, September.
    15. Agliardi, Elettra & Alexopoulos, Thomas & Karvelas, Kleanthis, 2023. "The environmental pillar of ESG and financial performance: A portfolio analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    16. Haibo Sun & Tonghuan Bai & Youqing Fan & Zhonglu Liu, 2024. "Environmental, social, and governance performance and enterprise sustainable green innovation: Evidence from China," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(4), pages 3633-3650, July.
    17. Sabbaghi, Omid, 2022. "The impact of news on the volatility of ESG firms," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 51(C).
    18. Ni, Yinan & Sun, Yanfei, 2023. "Environmental, social, and governance premium in Chinese stock markets," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    19. Zineb Aouni & Marek Hudon & Anaïs A Périlleux & Tyler Wry, 2024. "Crowdfunding social ventures: who rewards (or punishes) hybridity?," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/367191, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    20. Seifert, Marcel & Spitzer, Florian & Haeckl, Simone & Gaudeul, Alexia & Kirchler, Erich & Palan, Stefan & Gangl, Katharina, 2024. "Can information provision and preference elicitation promote ESG investments? Evidence from a large, incentivized online experiment," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ESG; STOXX Europe; financial performance; capital structure; profitability; valuation;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aue:wpaper:2218. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ekaterini Glynou (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/diauegr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.