Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found here.
https://www.ft.com/content/fbe10867-fea1-4887-b404-9f9e301e102e

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in 2010, which killed 11 workers and released almost 5mn barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, was not just an environmental cataclysm. It also changed the financial industry. Until then, sustainability ratings had been a niche business. For companies that made their living providing data and creating indices for financial markets, evaluating the environmental, social and governance performance of companies seemed like, at best, an interesting sideline.