Stock Market Reaction to ESG News in Norway

News on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) subjects are becoming increasingly prevalent in the largest economic newspapers in Norway. These news are followed by analysts, the public, and other stakeholders. This thesis investigates the extent of the stock market reaction following news related to ESG subjects. We assemble a dataset of news articles by performing a structured search in atekst's newspaper database Retriever. The articles concerns companies in the energy sector noted on the Oslo Stock Exchange, sampled in the period 2010-2021. We employ a natural language processing model to categorize the articles as either positive or negative. We conduct an event study around the announcement of the articles collected. We find that the market participants are responsive to the news releases. Our results suggest a positive market reaction to corporate ESG news with a positive sentiment and a negative reaction towards negative ESG news. We argue that shareholders assign utility and value to ESG initiatives in energy companies and punish unsustainable behaviour