Japan nuclear crisis firm TEPCO removed from sustainability indices

Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), the company at the centre of the Fukushima nuclear crisis in Japan, has been removed from three Dow Jones sustainability indices as of today.
A review has found a “significant reduction” in the company’s sustainability rating due to multiple failings of environmental management systems and occupational health & safety. The plant in eastern Japan was crippled by an earthquake and ensuing tsunami on March 11.
TEPCO has been axed from the regional DJSI Asia Pacific, DJSI Asia Pacific 40 and the DJSI Japan 40 indices by DJSI’s index design committee. The company had been a constituent since 2009.In total more than $8bn assets are managed under Dow Jones’ sustainable indices. The exclusion comes as Japan’s government agreed to set up a fund and issue bonds to help TEPCO compensate victims of the crisis and avoid financial collapse.
Dow Jones’ partner in the indices, Swiss asset management house SAM, hosted a webinar on the Japan crisis in March, which is available here

The 2010 annual review of the DJSI saw 48 companies added and 46 deleted, the biggest being Toyota Motor, Royal Dutch Shell and UniCredit.

In March this year, Shell severed the link between executive bonuses and the DJSI after it was dropped from the index.