Good citizenship can signal better creditworthiness – study

Environmental and social behaviour predicts credit ratings in North America – less so in Europe

Being a good corporate citizen can be a good sign of a company’s creditworthiness – but it depends which country it’s in, according to a new study.

Gregor Dorfleitner and Johannes Grebler, at Germany’s Regensburg University, and Sebastian Utz, at St Gallen in Switzerland, are the latest researchers to look at the link between financial strength and factors such as pollution reduction, social concern and others, under the heading of corporate social and environmental (CSE) performance.

In a