With regards to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Dexia Asset Management's sustainability analysts launched an "SRI alert" for BP end-of-april.

 An "SRI alert" involves an official warning to all investment professionals of Dexia AM that a specific company has been put on a watch list and a thorough SRI investigation in the company's situation has been launched. The results of this analysis are to be final within three months of its commencement at the latest and can result in a formal exclusion of the company's share from Dexia AM's SRI universe.

Dexia AM thus has contacted BP for further details and has launched an in-depth sustainability assessment of the BP oil spill incident and its impact on BP's sustainability score.

A full update of Dexia AM's sustainability analysis of BP will be completed by 21 June.
Following the "SRI alert" in April, and pending the conclusions of the updated analysis, Dexia AM's SRI investment managers were in any case not allowed to add BP-exposure and they have globally started to reduce it.

Dexia AM's Best-in-Class approach selects the best companies in a given sector with regard to sustainable development. Both a company's public strategy to tackle sustainability issues is taken into account as its actual and historical performance in addressing the theme.

Previous to the oil-spill incident, BP still had an overall sustainability score that was above average compared to other companies in the energy sector due to:

• Low exposure to carbon-intensive heavy oils and a relatively good exposure to Liquefied Natural Gas (a cleaner burning fuel compared to oil or coal), exposure to alternative energies, aiding its Greenhouse Gas Emissions profile vàv comparable companies
• a strong long-term production growth outlook relative to other companies in the energy sector, a broad resource base and one of the most complex refining portfolios
• compared to other companies in the energy sector, an efficient community management system and good revenue transparency to foreign countries.
  Because of these elements, previous to the oil-spill, BP's sustainability score was still in the upper 35% of the energy sector eligible for investments by sustainable funds.

In contrast to BP's above average sustainability score within the energy sector before the incident, the oil spill is a major problem for the sustainability score of BP. It obviously negatively impacts the actual performance dimension of the BP-scoring in our analytical framework. The updated scoring will also depend on our assessment of the quality of the company response to the incident and on our evaluation of the long term liabilities arising from the accident, as well as on the sustainability score of the overall activity portfolio of BP.

For more information about Dexia AM's sustainability analysis of BP, please consult our dedicated SRI Website.