Companies that are more inclusive of the LGBT+ community tend to outperform global equities overall, according to data from Credit Suisse.
In a note on Monday, the investment bank reported that “improved LGBT+ inclusion not only leads to greater equality but also matters from an economic point of view”, highlighting that the spending power of the 5-10% of the population that is LGBT+ is equivalent to between US$2.7-US$5.6 trillion of the G20 group of the world’s largest economies.
“To put it differently: if LGBT+ were an economy, it would be the 3rd or 4th largest globally”, Credit Suisse said.
The bank’s analysts also added 50 more companies to their list of LGBT+ inclusive firms, which are selected by assessing their policies, practices and benefits pertinent to LGBT+ employees, to create the LGBT+ 400 index.
Adjusting their performance according to the sector weighting in the MSCI ACWI Index of global equities, Credit Suisse’s analysts reported that the LGBT+ inclusive firms on its list “have outperformed the MSCI ACWI (excluding the LGBT-constituents) by 432 [basis points] per annum since 2010.
“This is a notable increase from the global alpha of 378 [basis points] that we observed in [December 2020]”, the bank said.
Companies previously included in Credit Suisse’s Rainbow Index include US tech giants Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT), Google owner Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Amazon Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) and social network Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB). Other firms featured include electric car maker Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) as well as pharma giant AstraZeneca PLC (LON:AZN) and Unilever PLC (LON:ULVR).