• Roundtable sheds light on implications of adopting integrity practices
• Event explores cost-effective ways to enhance corporate resilience, overcome corruption

Dubai-UAE: 19 September, 2017:  The Pearl Initiative, the leading independent private sector-led, not-for-profit organisation working to improve corporate transparency across the Gulf region, hosted a roundtable discussion in partnership with Siemens to explore the impact and future of integrity practices in the region. Experts from international, regional and UAE-based organisations convened to discuss the business value of tackling corruption through implementing corporate integrity best practices.

Carla Koffel said: “For the last five years, the Pearl Initiative has been actively involved in encouraging businesses to embrace stronger policies of corporate governance and invest in robust integrity frameworks. Through our periodic roundtables, we aim to promote greater standards of transparency and accountability throughout the business community in the GCC region with the goal of creating a sustainable business environment. In collaboration with like-minded entities such as Siemens, we are moving closer to our objective of establishing a community of businesses leading the way in the implementation of corporate integrity best practices.”

The roundtable represented an important milestone in the Pearl Initiative’s mission of assessing corruption and advocating against it. Offering a dynamic platform for leadership teams across organisations to examine the latest corruption trends and debate the actual effectiveness of universally accepted best practices, the event also reviewed cost-effective methods that organisations can introduce to enhance their resilience in overcoming corruption. 

Nadeem Anwer, Regional Compliance Head for Siemens Middle East, said: “In partnership with the Pearl Initiative, we seek to encourage transparent practices in the interest of ensuring clean business and healthy competition within the GCC region. Our joint anti-corruption roundtable enabled us to identify challenges existing in the market and explore real opportunities that integrity practices offer.” 

According to reports by the World Economic Forum, corruption increases the cost of doing business by up to 10 per cent on average. With growing awareness of the advantages of integrity in the workplace, entities around the world today seek to improve and formalise corporate integrity processes. This holds true in the GCC region as well, with multiple private and public sector organisations keen to implement strong integrity practices.

In 2015, with the help of a grant from the Siemens Integrity Initiative, the Pearl Initiative launched a programme to raise awareness and encourage adoption of business integrity best practices amongst business leaders and students across the GCC region. The programme introduces the first-ever Integrity Indicator for the private sector in the region – a voluntary framework to measure performance in relation to international benchmarks in integrity and regional best practices. Moreover, the initiative seeks to start conversations with future business leaders and motivate them to appreciate the value to business of strong anti-corruption and transparency measures.