MOSCOW, November 8 (RIA Novosti) - Russia has made little progress in moving toward corporate transparency in 2006, the international rating agency Standard and Poor's said in an annual study released Wednesday.
S&P Governance Services' 2006 Transparency and Disclosure Survey shows that the index of transparency among major Russian companies has increased to 53%, 3% up on last year.
Adjusting for changes in the methodology, the average year-on-year improvement in the index for 50 groups sampled both in 2005 and 2006 is 0.9 percentage points.
The S&P survey said the improvement in disclosure standards is mainly due to companies that had weaker disclosures in previous years.
It noted some progress in IFRS/U.S. GAAP reporting transparency by companies included in the sample, but said most of them were still reluctant to disclose sensitive information about operation of their boards and top management.
According to S&P, telecommunications has been Russia's most transparent sector while mechanical engineering, the least transparent.
There has been some advancement in ownership structure disclosure standards, the agency said. The percentage of disclosed stakes in Russia's aggregate privately owned property reached 34% in 2006, up from 28% a year earlier. On the other hand, information about the owners of at least 21% of private property has remained undisclosed.
Ownership concentration remains high despite a slight decrease among large private companies. Companies where a shareholder owns a controlling block of shares account for as much as 87% of the sampled companies' total market capitalization.
