Tobacco firms the most financially transparent

A four-year investigation by Fairfax Media into the financial statements reported by multinational firms operating in Australia has found that tobacco companies issue the cleanest sets of numbers of any group of multinationals in the country, according to a story by Michael West for the Age newspaper, relayed by the TMA.

Philip Morris (Australia), British American Tobacco (Australasia Holdings) and Imperial Tobacco Australia were said to abide by accounting standards and to pay taxes every year to state and federal governments.

Collectively they appeared to have the cleanest sets of numbers released by any group of multinationals in the country, even providing ‘general purpose’ accounts audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers rather than the ‘special purpose’ accounts that required a lower standard of disclosure and were ‘furtively favoured by most multinationals’.