Kao Corporation has recently been included in global stock indices for environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing: MSCI Japan ESG Select Leaders Index for the third consecutive year; and MSCI Japan Empowering Women Index (WIN) for the second time.

The MSCI Japan ESG Select Leaders Index and MSCI Japan Empowering Women Index (WIN) are developed by MSCI (US), a company providing institutional investors around the world with various support tools for their decision making. The indices are composed of companies with outstanding ESG performance selected from the MSCI Japan IMI Top 700 Index and Top 500 Index, respectively. These indices are broadly used as important criteria by global investors who focus on each company's ESG efforts.

With these designations, Kao continues to be included in all of the ESG indices^*1 that apply to Japanese companies and are selected by the Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), one of the world's largest pension funds that manages and invests the reserve funds of the National Pension and the Employees' Pension Insurance, both of which are public pension plans in Japan.