Iron ore majors ramp up supply even as China faces challenges
Iron ore is one of the year’s worst performing major commodities, slumping by almost a quarter as China’s property crisis drags on.
Mining giants Rio Tinto (LON:RIO) and BHP Billiton (NYSE:BHP) came up tops in the 2012 report by Transparency International, an anti-corruption Germany-based group, which analyzed the 105 largest publicly listed companies across the world.
The study, measuring the transparency of corporate reporting on a range of anti-corruption measures among the firms, places Rio and BHP in second and third respectively, with Norway’s Statoil taking the first place.
Company scores ranged from 0 to 10, with 0 being the least transparent and 10 the most transparent. The Berlin-based group said in statement the marks were based on public accessibility of information about anti-corruption systems, transparency in reporting on how they structure themselves and the amount of financial information they provide for each country they operate in.
Statoil scored an 8.3, while Rio and BHP each scored 7.2.
The companies analyzed collectively are worth more than $11-trillion and operated across 200 countries.
Financial institutions scored the lowest for corporate anti-corruption among all industry groups, which analyst attribute to what they are calling “The Barclays effect.” This refers to the interest rate manipulation scandal, involving global financial services provider Barclays and over a dozen of other major banks worldwide.
IT giants, such as Apple, Amazon.com and Google were at the bottom of the list, followed closely by investment guru Warren Buffet’s company Berkshire Hathaway, which came 100th in its anti-corruption disclosures.
