Social rating agencies implement complex filters to identify the companies with the best sustainable and social performance and help investors select the companies for their sustainable portfolios. This study analysed whether companies that are defined as ethical, sustainable and socially responsible by those agencies actually deserve this label. More specifically, the inclusion in the prestigious Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) World of companies that have been involved in controversies according to the Thomson Reuters Eikon database was studied. The results show that the inclusion of irresponsible companies in the DJSI Index is a fact. This outcome is in line with previous studies that criticise the methodologies applied by social rating agencies and those which outline the similarity of sustainable and conventional portfolios. The results may explain the contradictory conclusions regarding the performance of sustainable and conventional mutual funds in numerous studies.

A critical issue for socially responsible investors is the selection of the potential companies to invest in. For retail investors, the easiest and more intuitive option is to apply a negative screening approach to avoid investing in companies with bad reputation. In this line, companies involved in scandals regarding irresponsible activities which have become notorious in the mass media will be excluded from the potential companies. Implementing this process in a consistent and objectivity way is not an easy task, especially with worldwide portfolios. Nevertheless, there already exist complex databases which offer sensitive information to investors. This paper describes one of these databases. Furthermore, the problems of implementing such a negative screening methodology are presented, which are mainly related with the proper diversification of the resulting investment portfolios.

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The impressive growth of the funds managed following socially responsible investment strategies is a phenomenon that has been analysed from different perspectives. One of the main factors determining such investment strategies, maybe the most important one, is the selection of socially responsable companies, that is, the differentiation between socially responsible and irresponsible companies. Generally, the selection process is performed applying negative screening or positive screening strategies. Negative screening considers irresponsible companies those involved in the production of weapons or alcoholic beverages, following religious criteria. The positive screening approach is much more complex and less transparent. Both methodologies have been critizied as they do not prevent companies performing a clearly irresponsible behaviour to be included in the socially responsable portfolio. Moreover, it is important to stress that the opinion of retail investors is not considered when defining the concept of "socially responsible company", that is, the opinion of the potential clients of the socially responsible financial products. In this paper we are interested in the opinion of these potential clients regarding negative screening criteria, because we exclude the possibility of retail investors applying complex positive screening approaches. Our results show that compliance with the legislation is a main criterion for potential retail investors. This is an important outcome, as legal compliance is actually not a necessary requisite and non-complying companies are usually included in socially responsible financial products. Regarding negative screening based on the activity sector of the companies, results are more controversial.

This paper compares the return obtained by two of the most important stock indices in Spain: the con-ventional index IBEX 35 and the ethical index FTSE4Good Ibex. The aim of the study is to check whetherthe screening process to select only socially responsible companies has a negative impact on the returnby the ethical index. The results show that this is not the case, as the correlation between both indicesis very high. This high correlation is due to the fact that both indices are composed by almost the samecompanies. This outcome releases the question of what could be the purpose of an ethical index which isso similar to the conventional one, even regarding companies’ selection.