Transparency in corporate reporting: assessing the world’s largest companies (2014)
Transparency International
5 November 2014 :: 40 pages
pdf: http://files.transparency.org/content/download/1839/12366/file/2014_TransparencyInCorporateReporting_EN.pdf
[Excerpt from Introduction]

This Transparency International report…evaluates the transparency of corporate reporting by the world’s 124 largest publicly listed companies. The report assesses the disclosure practices of companies with respect to their anti-corruption programmes, company holdings and the disclosure of key financial information on a country-by-country basis. It follows on from a 2012 report which focused on the world’s 105 largest publicly traded companies. The report is part of a series of studies based on a similar methodology aimed at assessing the transparency practices of companies, the most recent being a 2013 report on leading emerging market companies…

…Transparency International believes that public reporting by companies on their anti-corruption programmes allows for increased monitoring by stakeholders and the public at large, thereby making companies more accountable. Global companies themselves increasingly understand the benefits of corporate reporting on a range of corporate responsibility issues, including their anti-corruption programmes, as an essential management tool rather than a burdensome and costly exercise that is carried out to satisfy stakeholders. The use of voluntary sustainability reporting guidelines such as those provided by the Global Reporting Initiative is on the rise. According to a 2013 survey by KPMG, close to 80 per cent of the largest 100 companies in 41 countries worldwide issuing corporate responsibility reports now use the Global Reporting Initiative’s Sustainability Reporting Guidelines. The report notes as well that an impressive 93 per cent of the world’s largest 250 companies issue a corporate responsibility report. The introduction in recent years of corporate reporting regulation in Denmark, France and South Africa has also acted as a major driver for company reporting in those countries….

[The report includes action recommendations focused to global companies, investors, governments and regulatory bodies, and civil society organizations.]