From actionaid

How did you get the data?

This research is based on information that had never been disclosed, let alone analysed until this year. UK company law compels companies to report all of their subsidiary companies, together with their country of registration. Companies should include this in their annual report or, where the comprehensive list is of excessive length, they can include it within their annual returns filed with Companies House.

When we started to looked for this information a year ago, we discovered that more than half of the FTSE 100 were not complying with this legal obligation.  When enquiries to individual companies failed to persuade them to disclose the information, we submitted complaints to Companies House, forcing companies to re-file their annual returns with the information included, and sparking sparking Vince Cable to announce the launch of an investigation

Having compiled a full set of subsidiary listings, ActionAid was assisted by company information specialists Duedil to process the data into a useable format.  The annual returns, which in most cases were available only as scanned PDF files from Companies House, were converted to text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software, after which extensive corrections were made.

You can download all the data via Google docs at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjR-5aT01TRYdGJqRmZVLW9FX2Vqam0ySE1CZ0wyUkE&hl=en_US#gid=0

For more on this story go to:

http://www.actionaid.org.uk/103038/ftse_100_tax_haven_tracker_the_data.html

Related story:

98 of FTSE 100 use tax havens

From economia

By Raymond Dogherty

All but two of the biggest 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange have companies based in tax havens, according to research from charity ActionAid

The analysis of the FTSE 100’s subsidiaries, joint ventures and associated companies produced very similar results to research conducted 18 months ago, despite recent public outcry and government rhetoric on a corporate tax avoidance clamp down.

The report also revealed that these blue chip companies are running more than 8,000 subsidiaries or joint ventures in onshore and offshore tax havens, including the Crown Dependencies, Cayman Islands and British Virgin Islands.

he charity has called for prime minister David Cameron to tackle the issue at the G8 summit in June, as the world’s poorest countries are suffering because their wealth is being “siphoned” away.

It showed 78 of the FTSE 100 do business in developing countries, and that every new entrant to the top ranking since 2011 has tax haven-based companies.

Nearly 9,000 the FTSE 100’s 22,000 overseas companies are located in tax havens, and while the total number of overseas companies decreased since 2011, the proportion of those located in tax havens has risen from 37.8% to 38.2%.

Banks are one of the most prolific users of havens with Barclays, HSBC, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and Lloyds among the top 10, according to the report.

It found 58% of FTSE100 banks’ overseas companies were in tax havens and almost a third of the countries in which FTSE100 banks operated were developing countries.

Mike Lewis, the charity’s tax justice policy adviser said, “Tax havens are one of the biggest hidden obstacles in the fight against global poverty. Poor countries lose an estimated three times more money to tax havens than they receive in aid each year – money needed to build roads, fund schools and finance developing countries’ own fight against hunger and poverty.

“Four years after G20 leaders promised an end to tax havens, tax haven structures are near-universal amongst the UK’s biggest multinationals.

“The UK is responsible for one in five of the world’s tax havens – that’s more than any other country.”

ActionAid made clear in the report that it is not accusing FTSE 100 companies of tax avoidance or evasion.

For more on this story go to:

http://economia.icaew.com/news/may-2013/98-of-ftse100-use-havens

Editor’s Note: The FTSE 100 Index, also called FTSE 100, FTSE, or, informally, the “footsie” (pron.: /ˈfʊtsiː/), is a share index of the 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange with the highest market capitalization. It is one of the most widely used stock indices and is seen as a gauge of business prosperity for business regulated by UK company law. The index is maintained by the FTSE Group, a subsidiary of the London Stock Exchange Group. FTSE 100 companies represent about 81% of the entire market capitalisation of the London Stock Exchange – Wikipedia