BIG HIT for 3rd Israel Reporting conference

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The Third Israeli Social and Environmental Reporting Conference was a resounding success!!

Held in the historic city of Caesarea on 4th May, this was the third annual reporting conference hosted by BeyondBusiness Ltd and drew close to 200 participants. This is the only professional conference in Israel on CSR reporting and has enjoyed the support of the Global Reporting Initiative each year. This year, it was the turn of Leena Wokeck, the GRI Network Relations Coordinator to come and address the conference – her presentation on a common language for sustainability can be found here. More papers and presentations here: And here are some other highlights.

A range of accomplished speakers presented at the conference. First and foremost, Mr Herman Mulder, former Director-General of Risk Management at ABN AMRO and the initiator of the Equator Principles. Mr Mulder provided insights about the current financial crisis and the changes required of businesses, which includes mandatory self-regulation, which means a requirement to report and be transparent but not highly constricting regulation such as the Sarbanex Oxley framework which became a bureaucratic box ticking exercise rather than a cultural transformation.

Other speakers included Professor Yedidia Stern. His fascinating lecture on the purpose of corporations propounded that "management of today's corporate capitalism, which encourages excessively risky economic policy" and that shareholders are the ones who demand excessive risk-taking as they have nothing to lose.

Dr Ehud Kookia, CEO of Maccabi Health Services, described the way he is driving csr in his 10,000 people organization and creating public awareness with a expired-drug-return program to avoid unwanted drugs getting into our waste systems and causing environmental damage.

Ahuva Yanai, the CEO of Matan- your way to give, the leading non-profit supporting business and community involvement programs talked about the value of such programs to corporations.
Dr Oren Peretz and Adv Ayalet BarAm presented a proposal developed in parternship with BeyondBusiness for a new law to mandate csr reporting for all government-owned companies.
The Reporters Report panel included representatives from Intel Israel, Bromine Compunds, Bank Leumi and comme il faut who described the way reporting has contributed to their overall business success.

Finally, Elaine Cohen, joint CEO of BeyondBusiness presented the first ever Transparency Index of Israeli companies. BeyondBusiness researched the internet transparency of the 100 top Companies traded on the Tel Aviv stock exchange, and, using a proprietary methodology developed around GRI principles, published the transparency levels of each company. Beyond Business presented certficates to the top 5 companies – Bank Hapoalim, Strauss, Bank Leumi, Partner Communications and the Oil Refineries, all of whom achieved high relative levels of transparency – more about this in a future post.

You can view pictures from the conference here


elaine cohen is the joint CEO of BeyondBusiness, a leading reporting and social-environmental consulting firm based in Israel. Visit our website at: www.b-yond.biz