Russian gas giant Gazprom is the “least respected” public company in the world, as selected by a group of U.S. money managers in a survey conducted by Barron’s magazine.
The publication asked 92 money managers to rank the world’s 100 largest companies (by market cap) according to how much respect they have for them. Such criteria as sound business strategy,” strong management, ethical business practices and competitive edge were often cited as generating the most respect for a corporation.
The three very least respected companies are all based in Russia, while the two U.S. entries in the “bottom ten” are financial institutions which received huge government bailouts. BP, blamed for a massive oil spill last year in the Gulf of Mexico, also tumbled into the bottom ten.
Here are the top ten least respected companies:
Gazprom is the biggest company in Russia and largest natural gas extractor in the world. In 2008, it produced 17 percent of global gas production and accounted for an astonishing 10 percent of Russian GDP.ReutersSberbank Rossii is the largest bank in Russia and Eastern Europe with more than 20,000 branches and 250,000 workers. The company is about 58 percent-owned by the Russian government, but Vladimir Putin’s regime plans to sell about 7.6 percent of its shares in the second half of the year as part of a massive privatization scheme.ReutersRosneft is an integrated oil company that it majority-owned by the Russian government. The company became Russia’s largest extraction and refinement company after having bought assets of former oil giant Yukos. Rosneft made headlines a few weeks ago when it entered into a controversial pact with BP plc to develop oilfields in the Arctic Shelf. Rosneft subsequently entered into a joint venture with Exxon-Mobil to develop a Black Sea property.ReutersBank of AmericaREUTERSCitigroup announced a 1-for-10 reverse stock split of its common stock and plans to reinstate a quarterly dividend of $0.01 per common share in the second quarter of 2011.ReutersBP plc (NYSE: BP) was probably the most hated company in the world last year after it was responsible for the cataclysmic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico (an environmental disaster that will take at least $20-billion to clean up). As such, BP plunged from #47 to #95 on Barron’s list.
The company’s chief at the time of the spill, Anthony Hayward, enraged millions when he declared “I would like my life back.”
BP is one of the most important companies in Britain, its dividends account for one-seventh of all dividend payments in the UK and form the foundation of many pension schemes.
ReutersThe second-biggest Chinese lender is the least respected Chinese company on Barron’s list.
In a book called The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers, by Richard McGregor quoted a remark by Guo Shuqing of the China Construction Bank that "the only way to put the latest communist principles into practice was to maximize returns for shareholders." The largest shareholder in the bank is a central government agency controlled by the Communist party. A few years ago the bank’s chief Zhang Enzhao was forced to resign after a lawsuit accused him of having accepted a $1 million bribe from an American company, Alltel Information Services.
ReutersPetroleum explorer Ecopetrol is the largest company in Colombia and one of the four principal petroleum companies in Latin America. The company accounts for more than 60 percent of domestic oil production and has exploration and production operations in Brazil, Peru and the US waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The company is 90 percent state-owned by the Colombian government although there are plan to privatize some of it in order to raise money infrastructure projects after heavy rains devastated much of the country late last year.
ReutersAustralian smokers will be forced to patronise cheap cigars from China and Indonesia if the federal government would not allow deadline extension of the plain packaging measures for tobacco products in the country, which takes effect on July next year.ReutersThe Swiss-based financial services company was caught in the web of the 2007-2008 credit crisis and rang up huge losses in the mortgage market (up to $37-billion). Subsequently, the bank found itself in deep legal troubles in the U.S. – including charges of conspiracy to defraud the IRS and federal government and tax evasion.
Reuters
