Morley Fund Management, one of the UK's biggest shareholders, will on Monday publish a controversial league table of companies ranked by their commitment to social and environmental issues.

Two pharmaceutical companies, AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline, topped the "sustainability matrix", while two cigarette companies, Imperial Tobacco and the Gallaher Group, appeared at the bottom of the list.

Morley's decision to publish the list is an attempt to apply more pressure on companies in the FTSE 100 index to improve their social and environmental performance.

Until now, fund managers have refused to publish their private rankings of companies for fear of upsetting the companies they cover and thereby having limited access to senior management.

Keith Jones, chief executive officer at Morley, the £105bn investment arm of CGNU, the UK's largest life assurer, said: "Our access will not be limited because we have engaged the companies before publishing the table and discussed with them the reasons for our concerns."

The table ranks companies from A to E for business sustainability on environmental and social issues and from one to five for management vision and practices on sustainable development and corporate responsibility.

AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline scored A2 while Imperial Tobacco and Gallaher Group scored E4.

The rankings are used by Morley's fund managers when judging whether or not to include a company in a pension fund's portfolio.

For most of Morley's funds, the sustainability matrix is an additional tool for fund managers, and just because a company is ranked bottom does not mean they cannot be included in a portfolio - although it is a factor.

But, for Morley's Sustainable Futures funds, with around £150m under management, only the 55 organisations ranked down to C3 can be held in their portfolios.

The companies scoring the highest rankings on the Morley Fund Management sustainability matrix, with their scores, were:

* AstraZeneca (A2)

* GlaxoSmithKline (A2)

* Pearson (A3)

* Smith& Nephew (A3)

* Reed International (A4)

Companies with the lowest rankings, with their scores, were:

* BAT (E3)

* Enterprise Oil (E3)

* Rolls-Royce (E3)

* BAE Systems (E3)

* Gallaher (E4)

* Imperial Tobacco (E4)

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