India has the most transparent companies, while Chinese firms are the most opaque, according to a global anti-graft watchdog’s survey released yesterday that assesses efforts by emerging market companies to fight corruption.
Transparency International said the report’s findings were “pathetic” and highlighted the urgent need for big multinational companies to do more to fight corruption.
The report covered 100 companies in 15 emerging market countries that also included Brazil, Mexico and Russia. The overall score slipped since the last Transparency in Corporate Reporting report in 2013, falling a fraction to 3.4 out of 10, with three-quarters of companies scoring less than half.
Photo: AP
The Berlin-based watchdog warned that the failure of a vast majority of companies surveyed to operate transparently risks creating an environment for corruption to thrive both in their businesses and the countries where they operate.
The weak scores are a big concern for global corruption fighting efforts, Transparency head of business integrity Susan Cote-Freeman said.
“All these companies, including the Chinese ones, are expanding in other geographies and they really have to raise the bar on their anticorruption and disclosure practices if we’re going to have a level playing field and if we’re going to really tackle this problem of corruption,” she said.
Companies were scored on three measures: anticorruption programs, the amount of information disclosed about subsidiaries, joint ventures and other holdings; and financial data released for operations in each country where it has business.
Thirty-seven Chinese companies were evaluated, making them the survey’s biggest group, but they had the weakest overall performance. The three companies that scored zero out of 10 were all Chinese: Chery Automobile Co (奇瑞汽車), appliance maker Guangdong Galanz Group Co (格蘭仕集團) and auto parts maker Wanxiang Group (萬向集團).
The list’s bottom 25 spots were also dominated by Chinese companies.
“The very weak Chinese results stem from weak or non-existent anticorruption policies and procedures, or a clear failure to disclose them in line with international practice,” Transparency International said in a press release accompanying its report.
Indian firms, on the other hand, dominated the top spots. Telecom company Bharti Airtel took first place with a score of 7.3 out of 10, followed by six units of conglomerate Tata and technology company Wipro.
One reason Indian firms came out on top is strict government requirements for financial disclosures, including operations in different countries.
Another is that older companies, such as Tata, have been focusing on anticorruption efforts for “quite a long time,” Cote-Freeman said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to