Trucost Plc is an environmental research organisation that was established to help companies and investors understand the environmental impacts of business activities. Trucost provides data and analysis on company emissions and natural resource usage and presents these in financial as well as quantity terms, providing the basis for an improved dialogue between companies, investors and other stakeholders.

The external cost methodology employed by Trucost outlines a company's environmental impacts in order of significance, enabling directors and auditors to focus their efforts on those impacts that are likely to be material to the business. This also forms a transparent process by which a company and its auditors can assess whether it should make a public disclosure, for example under the EU Accounts Modernisation Directive.

Fund managers and analysts increasingly need to know how environmental issues may have a financially material impact on companies' future earnings and make comparisons between companies in a given sector. Yet their ability to accurately assess this is currently constrained by the lack of consistent or comprehensive environmental data disclosure by companies. Trucost's comprehensive coverage ensures that all companies in an index are included, not just those that disclose environmental information. Trucost provides data and analysis on over 4,000 companies worldwide, including complete coverage of the FTSE All-Share, S&P 500, Nikkei 225, DJ STOXX and MSCI indices. Click here for details.

Trucost has the support of an International Advisory Panel of leading academics in the fields of economics and the environment, who lend their considerable experience to the specialist research staff located in London. Trucost's Board of Directors not only demonstrates a broad range of business experience, with a strong emphasis on economics and the finance industry, but it also brings together a variety of academic and professional disciplines.

In November 2004 Bob Monks, the veteran US corporate governance activist, took a substantial minority equity interest in Trucost and appointed two directors to the board - State Senator Richard Bennett and John Higgins. Click here for more information.