Seagate Among "100 Best Corporate Citizens" According to CRO Magazine

SCOTTS VALLEY, Calif.-Seagate Technology (NYSE: STX) has been named to CRO Magazine’s Ninth Annual top “100 Best Corporate Citizen” list, in recognition of the company’s performance across a wide range of corporate citizenship and social responsibility issues.

“We are proud to receive this recognition from an organization such as CRO (Corporate Responsibility Officer Magazine), who for nine years has researched and acknowledged the companies that lead in corporate social responsibility across a variety of key criteria,” said Dave Wickersham, president of Seagate. “While our efforts are ongoing, this recognition underscores the hard work Seagate has been doing to advance and sustain its position in all areas of corporate citizenship.”

CRO Methodology
With transparency being such an important component of corporate responsibility, IW Financial relies on publicly-available data from company financial disclosures, sustainability/environment/citizenship reports, websites, EPA databases, and a number of other sources as part of its standardized research processes.

CRO also culled the initial rankings and excluded eight companies that numerically qualified as one of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens because of alleged transgressions that ranged from suppression of information about product risks to accounting scandals.

“Some companies have good environmental policies,” says Mark Bateman, IW Financial’s director of Research. “Some companies have great employee relations. Some companies have exemplary human rights records. CRO’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens list answers the question: Which companies do best across a wide variety of citizenship issues? Companies can’t make it onto the list if they do poorly in too many categories.”

The 2008 list marks the 100 Best Corporate Citizens’ ninth year in publication. Business Ethics magazine, which CRO acquired in 2006, published the list for the first seven years and CRO continued the tradition in 2007 and 2008. The list’s methodology for 2008 includes two significant changes. First, CRO changed rating agencies, switching from KLD Analytics to IW Financial. The change was driven by IW Financial’s dedication to basing rankings solely on publicly-available data, as compared with KLD’s interview-and-questionnaire-based methodology. Second, the 2008 rankings are limited to the Russell 1000—companies that represent the largest impact on B2B and consumer markets. In previous years, the rankings also included the Domini 400 companies, which resulted in a perceived bias in favor of smaller companies.

The 100 Best companies will be honored in a special reception at the conclusion of the Spring CRO Conference March 27, 2008 at the Union League Club in NYC. For more information on the CRO Conferences, please go to www.TheCRO.com/conferences.