Keynote Dr. Kurt Bock

Mr. Bock, in April 2012 you were appointed by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as a new member of the UN Global Compact Board. What are the main reasons for BASF’s engagement in the UN Global Compact?

Kurt Bock: As a founding member of the UN Global Compact in 2000, we strongly support the role of the UN Global Compact as a peer-learning and dialogue platform. By combining high-level commitment with hands-on learning at the local level, the UN Global Compact has gathered experience with concrete best practices in the area of sustainability, and it has a unique competence in the field of facilitating multistakeholder dialogue and projects.

BASF is also participating in the LEAD platform of the UN Global Compact. What is your experience with the initiative so far, and what are your current priorities as a LEAD company?

We welcomed the opportunity of becoming more active in sharing our experiences with other Global Compact members, when the UN Global Compact launched its LEAD platform in 2011. After a two-year pilot phase, LEAD is now focusing on a few workstreams more intensively. BASF is currently engaged in two workstreams: One deals with the post-2015 development process of the UN. Here, the UN Global Compact is asked to bundle and bring in the perspectives of participating companies. The other workstream deals with integrated reporting.

The term “integrated reporting” seems to be on everyone’s lips at the moment. Your company has been publishing an integrated report since 2007. Why did BASF decide to do this?

We aim to demonstrate how sustainability contributes to the long-term success of our company. As the first large German company, we have documented our economic, environmental, and social performance and provide specific examples to demonstrate the interdependencies between financial and non-financial information. We have made progress toward a fully integrated report, but there is still potential to further integrate our reporting.

How would you define the target group of your report? And how do you think integrated reporting might change the behavior of your target group?

Our report targets expert readers from both the financial and the sustainability communities. It aims to serve as a basis for assessing BASF’s current and future risks as well as opportunities, and therefore it enables investors and other stakeholders to evaluate our performance and strategy. Our report also strives to give a full picture of our company’s performance to enable investors and analysts to judge whether BASF is a suitable investment. Furthermore, integrated reporting helps us to further strengthen our reputation as a reliable and responsible business partner. In the long run, we ensure our license to operate by providing neighbors, NGOs, politicians, and others with transparent information.

Currently there is no internationally recognized standard for integrated reporting. Could the work of the International Integrated Reporting Council help to move integrated reporting into the mainstream?

The International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC) is in the process of defining a framework for integrated reporting. The discussions and exchange of information among different companies in the IIRC pilot program enable us to better meet the expectations of our stakeholders, and especially those of our investors.

What are BASF’s main challenges regarding integrated reporting?

An integrated report has to reflect an integrated corporate strategy: It is an excellent way of demonstrating that sustainability is an integral part of our strategy and operations. All information is provided in a single publication that is externally audited. One challenge, we face in the context of integrated reporting is the inclusion of non-financial data within an ambitious reporting time schedule.

What do you think will be the main challenges in the next years?

The main challenge of an integrated report is to provide a view of the material aspects of a company in a comprehensive way to its stakeholders. It is important for us as well as the readers of integrated reports that the various initiatives concerning integrated reporting such as IIRC are compatible with existing reporting standards such as the Global Reporting Initiative and the UN Global Compact.