Vodafone: World's 5th most accountable firm

Arun Sarin and Lakshmi Mittal have little in common other than their Indian origin, but when it comes to the accountability of the companies led by the two towards society and environment, Vodafone is over four times more "accountable" than Mittal Steel.

Sarin-led British mobile giant Vodafone has been named as the world's fifth most accountable firm by Fortune Magazine in a list of the world's 100 Most Accountable Companies 2007. The list has Mittal Steel, headed by NRI billionaire Lakhsmi Mittal, at 96th position.

Vodafone has been given an "accountability score" of 66.3 points, against just 14.2 points assigned to Mittal Steel. However, Vodafone has slipped four positions from its top rank last year, while Mittal Steel has just made its debut.

The list has been topped by UK-based energy giant BP, followed by Barclays, Italian energy firm ENI and banking giant HSBC Holdings among the top five.

Incidentally, India is high on the radar of both Vodafone and Mittal Steel. Vodafone acquired a controlling stake in Indian mobile player Hutch-Essar, now called Vodafone Essar, for about $11 billion earlier this year, while Mittal is planning to set up two steel plants in the country with an estimated investment of about $20 billion.

Nearly half of the companies mentioned in the list are present in India, either through their operations or as a market for their products. But, not a single company based in the country has managed to find place in the list of 100 companies.

However, there are also at least five companies with persons of Indian origin in their top-management teams. Besides Vodafone and Mittal Steel, such companies include Hewlett-Packard, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank.

HP has Vyomeshi Joshi as President of Imaging and Printing Technology, Citigroup has Ajay Banga as Chairman and CEO of Global Consumer Group (International) and Anshu Jain is Head of Global Markets and Member of the Group Executive Committee at Deutsche Bank.

The major companies on the list with an Indian presence include banking giants Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, ABN Amro and Barclays, computer hardware major HP. Besides, there are some other household names such as IBM, General Motors, GE, Nestle, P&G, Toyota, Volkswagen, Fiat, BMW, Hyundai, LG, Honda and Samsung.

Fortune said despite Vodafone's slip from the top, it is "still the highest-ranked telecom or tech company."

"Vodafone has worked with the World Bank to develop strategies to use mobile phones to expand access to financial markets in developing countries.... In the UK, a new test program uses text messages to remind diabetics to take insulin and offer confidential health advice to teens," it noted.

The list has been published in the latest issue of the global media giant CNN-Time Warner group magazine and is based on a survey jointly conducted with London-based think-tank AccountAbility and for-profit consultancy CSR Network.

The companies were ranked on the basis of the quality of their commitment to social and environmental goals. The score was given on a 1-100 scale for categories like strategy, governance, stakeholder involvement and also on the criteria to measure how well a company actually performs.

Fortune noted, however, that a poor rank does not mean a company is irresponsible. Even without non-financial goals in mind, corporations can achieve socially good results."

"Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway (ranked 99), for example, dumped its stake in PetroChina, a Chinese company that activists say supports genocide by pumping oil in Sudan," the magazine said.