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As countries develop rules requiring oil, gas and mining companies to disclose key financial data on a country by country basis, Revenue Watch has researched these global stock exchanges, to document the significance of these companies in global financial markets.

Our research identified publicly traded oil, gas and mining companies worldwide. The findings provide a global snapshot of extractive sector public capital, showing the significance of the sector in these financial markets and which extractive companies will be covered by the SEC regulations.

In many developing countries, natural resources account for the largest share of exports and revenue, but too often resource wealth also brings problems that actually hinder development. Oil and mining windfalls can slow the growth of other industries, and secrecy regarding company payments to governments can enable large-scale embezzlement and corruption.

In July 2010, the United States took an historic step toward addressing these issues by passing the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act. The Lugar-Cardin transparency provision of the law requires companies engaged in oil, gas and mining activities and registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to publicly disclose any payments they make to governments, country by country and project by project. Recognizing the power of such regulations, other jurisdictions throughout the world are now developing similar or expanded legislative proposals.

Revenue Watch's research included the 30 largest non-U.S. stock exchanges by market capitalization, as ranked by the World Federation of Exchanges, as well as the Oslo Børs of Norway, The TSX Venture Exchange, the Canadian National Stock Exchange, and the NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ exchanges of the United States.

See below for key conclusions of the research, or visit the Downloads page for the full research report and a downloadable spreadsheet of the data on company listings and market capitalization.

Conclusions:

  • Momentum is growing in many markets for requiring oil, gas and mining companies to disclose their key financial data on a country by country basis. The exchanges that have introduced or committed to introducing rules (such as in the United States, Hong Kong and European Union) represent a significant share of the market value of all extractive companies. Our research also shows the importance of the Toronto, Australia, Shanghai and Johannesburg markets, and the potential impact if regulators there were to join the United States, European Union and Hong Kong in introducing similar disclosure regulations.
  • Regulations in the EU would cover about 26 percent of the global market of extractive sector securities.
  • With the large number of extractive sector companies on the Toronto and Australian exchanges (556 and 1004, respectively), the prompt adoption of new rules by these jurisdictions could have an immediate impact, particularly given the large number of these companies that operate in Africa.
  • Rule changes in South Africa, where the Johannesburg exchange is Africa's largest and has significant extractive sector activity as well as a large number of African companies listed, will receive strong support from regional civil society groups already active on governance and economic justice issues.
  • The recent rule changes by the Hong Kong Exchange present opportunities to advocate new, national regulations in China.

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