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Companies' conduct assessed

July 10, 2012

Companies are reporting more, but not enough about anti-corruption programs and their implementation, a new study by Transparency International claims. It looked at the world's 105 biggest publicly-traded firms.

https://p.dw.com/p/15UhF
Banknotes changing hands covertly
Image: fovito/Fotolia

Transparency International said on Tuesday a survey of accountability levels in the world's largest public companies provided a mixed picture. The anti-corruption organization assessed 105 publicly-traded firms, with scores ranging from 0 to 10 for the highest level of corporate reporting.

Transparency's appraisal was based on public availability of information about anti-corruption schemes and the amount of financial reporting companies provided for each country they operated in.

Norway's Statoil emerged as the highest scoring firm at 8.3 points. It disclosed significant information about its subsidiaries, taxes and profits across the 37 nations where it operates.

Financial institutions under fire

Bringing up the rear were the Bank of China and the Bank of Communications, two Chinese lenders with the weakest public information structures.

Transparency pointed out that banks and insurers underperformed across the board even though opaque transparency structures had played no small role in the recent financial crises.

"Banks should not be ale to pocket bailout money from taxpayers, while at the same time refusing to publicly document their operations," the head of the group's German outfit, Edda Müller, said in a statement in Berlin.

Russia's energy giant Gazprom, with a rating of 2.8 in 98th place, and Internet heavyweight Google fared little better. Google scored slightly higher at 2.9 out of 10, which was enough to beat online shopping website Amazon.com, which was one spot below Gazprom with the same rating.

All of the seven German companies scrutinized in the survey ended up in the top third of the table, with chemical giant BASF securing seventh position.

hg/msh (AFP, dpa)