CPA Journal: One Company’s Integrated Reporting Journey - The Case of Gold Fields
Global mining companies are subject to a more complex array of external effects and influences than companies in most other industries. The best way to deal with this is to give as much thought to environmental, social, and governance factors as to operational and financial issues and manage the trade-offs between them; in other words, to manage the company in an integrated manner. Integrated reporting is the most effective way to convey this to the industry’s myriad and sometimes adversarial stakeholders.
As one of the world’s largest gold mining companies, listed on both the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) and New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and operating in six countries on four continents, Gold Fields felt that integrated reporting was a natural fit. Being an early adopter of integrated reporting in South Africa, it produced its first integrated report in 2010 and became a pilot company of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC).