Latest corporate research

Toyota used its professed obsession with quality and efficiency to turn itself into the world’s leading automaker, but a safety scandal that erupted in early 2010 has seriously damaged the company's reputation. Although the Japanese-headquartered company has production and sales operations around the world, its success was based to a great degree in the United States, where it built a series of heavily subsidized plants, and took advantage of the weakened condition of Detroit’s Big Three to capture market share.

The JSW Group is a $3.7 billion worth conglomerate with interests in steel, energy, minerals and mining, aluminium, infrastructure and logistics, cement and IT. The Group projects its power sector company, JSW Energy, as one of its companies to watch out for. JSW's projects, notably its power plants in Jaigad, in the Western Indian state of Maharashtra, and its plans to set up aluminium smelters and mines in the tribal tracts of Andhra Pradesh have attracted significant resistance from local communities, including farmers.

Suez Environnement is one of a handful of global companies that dominate the contentious business of providing drinking water and waste collection services on a for-profit basis. Operating in about 30 countries, it provides water services to some 76 million people and trash services to 51 million. Suez Environnement was previously a part of the French services conglomerate Suez but was spun off in 2008 when Suez merged with Gaz de France to form GDF Suez, which retains a 35 percent holding in Suez Environnement.

The Madras Aluminium Company Ltd. (MALCO) is part of Vedanta Resources, a London listed metals and mining major with Aluminium, Copper and Zinc operations in UK, India and Australia. MALCO is a primary Aluminium producer in South India with operations encompassing mining, refining, smelting and power generation.

Syncrude Canada is one of the leading players in the big, dirty business of extracting oil from the tar sands of northern Alberta. It is a joint venture owned by an investment trust and a group of six U.S., Canadian and Japanese oil companies, among them the Canadian subsidiary of ExxonMobil. The company has been targeted by environmental groups because of its large volume of greenhouse gas emissions, but Syncrude has experienced a higher degree of controversy over an incident in 2008 in which some 1,600 ducks were killed at one of the company waste ponds.