Corporate History

Sustainability pays off.

This is our conviction and has been so ever since the company started under the previous name CaringCompany in March 1992. The same year that the UN environmental conference in Rio called for this expanded perspective on environmental issues - "sustainability" - which also includes social issues.

The founders Magnus Furugård and Susanne Nyman had both been aware of the way the wind was blowing during their time at Greenpeace in the late 1980s. On a study trip to the United States in February 1992, they found many concrete examples of a new form of environmental and social commitment in businesses, integrated with commercial activity and leading to improved profitability. What today is called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

The discovery of this new trend led to many puzzle bits falling into place. The founders' background in economics, management and journalism enabled them to see an opportunity to bring the concept of sustainability in a completely new way to the players who are perhaps most able to contribute to a better world: businesses and investors. And to help them do it.

This is GES Investment Services' mission: "To make it a little bit better, everyday" – investments, companies, our business and, of course, the world. We do this, by providing the finance sector with analyses of and consultation on the companies' sustainability performance and preparedness. This is done through a number of quantitative and qualitative analysis services.

GES is the family name for our analysis services. It stands for Global Ethical Standard, which also is the name of our base analysis – GES Global Ethical Standard®. The basis for this service and our add-on services, are global standards for environment, human rights, business ethics and corporate governance.

GES aims at providing common references to objectively judge different companies upon – in all markets around the world.

The philosophy behind GES is essentially that all international norms agreed upon between countries and their multilateral organizations, are of importance to companies operating in those countries and that they eventually will be judged in accordance with these norms by the authorities, the public and their representatives, NGO's, media, etc. Therefore these agreements serve as a reasonable foundation for evaluating companies.

In our services we cover large global universes of world indeces or more, in order to serve mainstream investors' needs. This is in line with our vision to become a leading global partner for Responsible Investment solutions.

In November 2003, CaringCompany changed its name to GES Investment Services, in order to concentrate our trademarks and at the same time underline our role as a service company for investors.

Today, GES Investment Services is Northern Europe’s leading analysis house for Responsible Investment adding proven value to €650 billion of investments worldwide.