Royal Bank of Canada remains the only Canadian bank with a spot on an international ranking of corporate ethical reputations by Covalence SA.

The bank was ranked seventh in the ‘Best Ethical Quote’ category among banks in the third quarter ethical reputation ranking released by Geneva-based Covalence on Thursday.

The Ethical Quote category weighs the amount of positive news on the companies, such as initiatives they take, versus negative news, such as stakeholder issues and criticisms surrounding the companies. Covalence generates the ranking by tracking thousands of documents found among media, enterprise, NGO and other sources.

RBC also scored the runner-up position among banks that made the most progress in ethical reputation during the quarter, behind HSBC Holdings. In the category of Best Reported Performance, which looks solely at the amount of positive news about the banks, RBC took the fourth spot.

The top performers in the banking sector were HSBC Holdings, Bank of America and Barclays Bank.

HSBC Holdings also earned the third spot in Covalence’s overall ranking of companies across all sectors. The overall leaders were Toyota Motor and Unilever.

Covalence considers 45 different criteria in generating the ranking, including such areas as wages, social sponsorship and environmental standards.

The criteria categories that gained the most importance within positive news during the quarter were product environmental risk, waste management and labour standards. Within negative news, the criteria that gained the most importance was downsizing, which relates to companies’ efforts to minimize negative social impacts of factory closures and production transfers to other countries.

IE