Promoting corporate transparency in the Baltic Sea Region

Modern businesses are complex global operations. The world’s biggest companies have thousands of subsidiaries. They touch the lives of hundred thousands of people across the globe.

Transparency International believes is critical to ensure that companies are part of the solution to fighting corruption.

Our report, “Transparency in Corporate Reporting”, assesses the disclosure of financial and other information for 105 of the largest publicly traded companies. It also looks at the transparency footprint of each of these companies across 177 countries in which they operate: to what extent are earnings and taxes in specific countries made public?

Corporate transparency reduces opportunities for misuse of public money, but also shows how companies contribute to the societies they operate in. When this disclosure does not happen, it is harder for citizens to hold governments to account for the way they use revenues from multinational companies, and harder to track the contribution of companies. Corporate reporting on anti-corruption programmes demonstrates a company’s commitment to combatting corruption and makes it possible for multiple stakeholders to monitor company behaviour and hold companies accountable.

Conference focused on the Baltic region

The results of this report will be presented on 14 February 2013 at the conference “Business Integrity – Time for Action in the Baltic Sea Region” held at the Riga Business School in Riga, Latvia. A special focus will be on the corporate footprint that multinational companies leave in Latvia and the Baltic Sea Region.

In addition, Transparency International chapters from Sweden and Norway will present the results of their national corporate transparency indices. The Swedish report is available here.

The event will convene representatives of businesses, NGOs and governments of the Baltic Sea Region with the aim of improving transparency in the business environment. You can watch a live stream of the proceedings on 14 February 2013 from 8:30-15:00 CET.