Financial Transparency Coalition

In July of last year President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act–also known as the “financial overhaul bill”—into law. Embedded into the Dodd-Frank Act was Section 1504, which required companies listed on the U.S. stock exchange to disclose payments to governments for oil, gas, and mining. Under these provisions, companies would provide this information in their SEC filings and it would be publicly available. Unsurprisingly, the American Petroleum Industry (API), a U.S. trade association for the oil and gas industry, is pushing back. In a letter to the SEC, API claims Section 1504 defies Executive...

The Hong Kong Stock Exchange’s listing agreement says:

In addition to the information set out in Appendix 1A, a Mineral Company must include in its listing document……if relevant and material to the Mineral Company’s business operations, information on the following:— (c) compliance with host country laws, regulations and permits, and payments made to host country governments in respect of tax, royalties and other significant payments on a country by country basis;

Note the reference to country-by-country reporting. I stress, the data referred to here is on past performance. There is a separate requiremnt that these payments also be projected.

In Treasure Islands I briefly mention Sir John Cowperthwaite, Hong Kong's Financial Sectetary from 1961-1971, who had such stridently anti-government views that he banned the publication of official statistics because they would, he said, attract too much attention from civil servants. Such is the anti-government, anti-society worldview that I have so often encountered offshore. I also quote Jack Blum, a top US criminal investigator, who described Hong Kong as an "anything-goes, no-regulation world . . corporations doing business in China set up Hong Kong companies with secret shareholdings . . today Hong Kong is where most of the corruption in...

Collin Swan analyzes the groundbreaking, new reporting requirements at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and examines the implications they will have on the proposed Energy Security Through Transparency (ESTT) Act in the United States.

Today, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX) is enacting a clear and comprehensive set of listing requirements for mineral companies that are in line with international standards and encourages greater...