Singapore first to release sustainability performance data in Asia

The ever-efficient Singapore is the 5th fastest globally and fastest in Asia in terms of timeliness of sustainability disclosures after the Q4 year-end.

According to 'Trends in Sustainability Disclosure: Benchmarking the World’s Composite Stock Exchanges’ commissioned by Aviva Investors and produced in partnership with CK Capital, companies trading in Denmark are, on average, the world’s fastest sustainability disclosers; 57% of all large companies on the Danish composite exchange with a Q4 2011 financial year-end had published 2011 sustainability data by May 1, 2012. The top five were rounded out by Australia (56%), the Netherlands (48%), Sweden (45%) and Singapore (43%).

Companies trading on composite stock exchanges based in Europe and South-East Asia are quickest to market with sustainability data.

The short disclosure response times on exchanges based in Hong Kong and Singapore may be a result of the high degree of efficiency and transparency that characterize these large financial centers.

The case of China, with 24% of its companies with a Q4 2011 financial year-end having published 2011 sustainability data by May 1, 2012, is interesting in the sense that companies trading on Chinabased exchanges such as the Shanghai Stock Exchange do not usually make the top headlines in terms of sustainability disclosure and performance. However, the strong supervisory presence of the central government and the predominance of state-owned companies on such exchanges may play a role in fast turnaround times for sustainability disclosure.

Equally interesting, as shown earlier, companies on the Brazilian, South African, French and Italian composite exchanges performed quite favorably in disclosure rates. However, on average, they are among the world’s slowest sustainability disclosers. For example, only 6% of all companies on the Brazilian composite exchange with a Q4 2011 year-end had disclosed their 2011 sustainability reports by May 1, 2012.