About the Report:

Bursa Malaysia has been ranked 2nd among ASEAN stock exchanges, in a recent report released by Corporate Knights, “Measuring Sustainability Disclosure: Ranking the World’s Stock Exchanges 2019”.

First commissioned by Aviva Plc in 2012, the annual report tracks corporate disclosure on seven sustainability indicators.

Bursa Malaysia was outperformed by the Stock Exchange of Thailand but it surpassed performance by the Singapore Exchange (SGX), Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE), Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX), Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange.

Key Summary of the Report's Findings:

1. Nasdaq Helsinki topped the disclosure performance ranking for the second year in a row, with excellent disclosure rates across all indicators. Among environmental indicators, the Finnish companies did especially well in disclosing energy use and GHG emissions, which were disclosed by 32 of the 36 companies evaluated.
2. BME Spanish stock exchanges and Euronext Paris kept their places in the top five, with Euronext Lisbon and Johannesburg Stock Exchange emerging as newcomers to the top five.
3. The top 10 included three exchanges from emerging markets: Bolsa de Varoles de Colombia, the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). Their presence shows that sustainability reporting is taking hold in emerging countries.
4. Of 6,261 large companies analyzed, 85% disclosed payroll, followed by greenhouse gases (41%), energy (33%), water (28%), waste (27%), injuries (24%) and employee turnover (22%)
5. All of the top 10 ranked stock exchanges have mandatory, prescriptive requirements for sustainability disclosure.
6. There has been a proliferation of both voluntary and mandatory regulations to encourage corporate sustainability disclosure around the world and these have, for the most part, been successful in achieving their stated goals. However, the near zero growth in sustainability disclosure suggests that new approaches are needed to spur sustainability reporting anew, especially among those companies that have never published any quantitative sustainability performance data.

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Corporate Knights