South African Petrochemical Group listed on Dow Jones

PETROCHEMICALS group Sasol has become the first South African industrial company to be listed on the Dow Jones sustainability world index, the company said yesterday.The Down Jones sustainability world index, started in 1999, consists of the top 10% of the largest stocks in the Dow Jones global indexes in terms of their sustainability and environmental practices. The index covers 2500 companies. The corporate sustainability of the companies was assessed through a weighting system that looked at economic, environmental and social metrics.“This is a great achievement for Sasol. It is the first time we have been listed on this renowned index. Our previous best was to get to the top 15% in the oil and gas sector last year,” Sasol CE Pat Davies said yesterday.Sasol, one of SA’s biggest polluters, has an abatement project at Sasol Nitro that converts greenhouse gas nitrous oxide into nitrogen and oxygen as a clean development mechanism.Davies earlier this month said, unlike other participants in clean development mechanism projects, Sasol would not sell its carbon credits.John Prestbo, editor and executive director of Dow Jones indexes, yesterday said several institutional investors were factoring in sustainability “and a growing number of market participants are integrating long-term economic, environmental and social factors into their analysis”.Meanwhile, Sasol has bought a little more than 6% of its shares in a share buy-back programme, an initiative that could see the group buy up to 10% of its shares. Sasol has doubled the number of its own shares bought in the open market within a year. The group reached the 3% mark last October.Chief financial officer Christine Ramon has in the past said the share repurchase programme was one of several options to restructure the group’s balance sheet. Sasol, through wholly-owned subsidiary Sasol Investment Company, bought 6,01%, or 37,9-million, of its ordinary shares from March last year to last Thursday.Sasol said this week that since March last year it had spent R11,2bn buying the shares.Business Day Johannesburg

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