The list was made up of 40 major companies of the power sector.

Today, the international rating committee Standard & Poor’s published the results of the transparency research of Russian power companies.

The first position in the rating of transparency of the power enterprises belongs to OJSC Enel OGK-5. Its rating is 66%, which is considerably – 6% exceeds the assessment of the nearest business rival. Together with OJSC Enel OGK-5, six other power companies have the greater amount of the published corporate information, than in general the major Russian public companies in 2009. Among them are two grid companies: JSC “Lenenergo”, and IDGC of North-West, as well as three power generating companies: JSC “Mosenergo”, and JSC RusHydro and JSC “WGC-3”. INTER RAO UES OJSC holding company was also among the leaders.      

“Russian power companies feel the need for the capital investments. To attract the external investments they need to raise the level of confidence to themselves in the investment community, that is the reason why they need to have the high degree of the corporate transparency”, says Ekaterina Marushkevich, Analyst of the Corporate Governance Rating Service. “Though, at present, the level of information transparency of power companies is low. The companies of the sector have to make a lot of efforts to increase their compatibility at the international capital markets”.

According to the message of S&P, the research showed the low level of information transparency of the companies of the sector in comparison with the international enterprises and the major Russian companies from other sectors. The index of information transparency of 40 leading public companies of the electric power accounted for 44.9%. At the same time the midrange of transparency of 90 largest Russian power companies from different branches accounted for 55.8% that is 10.9% higher than that of the enterprises of the electric power.

Among the weak points of the practice of information disclosure by the power companies, the research points out the low financial transparency, drawbacks of information disclosure about the structure of the property and excessively restricted amount of information about the remuneration of management in public reports of the sector companies.

The research is the analytical project of Standard & Poor’s. They use information accessible from the public sources. The basis of the methodology developed by Standard & Poor’s account for 110 criteria grouped in three blocks:

- structure of the property and shareholders rights;

- financial and operational information;

- structure and procedures of work of the Board of Directors and the management.