Violation
Tracker UK allows users to quickly see which companies have been cited
for short-changing workers’ wages, cheating consumers, harming the
environment, or breaking the law in a variety of other ways. It
aggregates official government data from regulators such as the
Environment Agency, the Financial Conduct Authority, and the Employment
Tribunal. Each entry includes a link to the agency website or document
from which the data was obtained.
Using
a proprietary matching system, Violation Tracker UK shows which of the
individual penalties in the database were imposed on subsidiaries of
large parent corporations. The holdings of more than 650 parents,
including both publicly traded and privately held companies based in the
UK or abroad, are captured. FTSE 100 companies and their subsidiaries
account for more than one-quarter of the £11.9 billion in penalties
documented in the database.
Due
mainly to a £991 million bribery settlement with the Serious Fraud
Office last year, the parent company with the largest penalty total
(just over £1 billion) is Airbus. It is followed by the now-defunct
Nortel Networks, which in 2017 reached a settlement with The Pensions
Regulator worth an estimated £1 billion. Next are Barclays (£515
million), Rolls-Royce (£510 million) and Lloyds Banking Group (£467
million). (See tables below for more details.)
Parent
companies in the financial services sector account for £4.5 billion in
penalties, followed by aerospace at £1.6 billion and telecommunications
at £1.2 billion.
The
parent sector with the greatest number of cases is the utility business
with 962 entries, most of which involve private water companies. One of
those, United Utilities Group, has more cases (204) than any other
company in the database, though many of its fines are small and total
only £5 million.
Violation
Tracker UK enables users to search the data many ways: by corporate
parent, by subsidiary name, by industry sector (including private
equity), by regulatory agency, by broad or narrow categories of
offenses, by size of penalty, by location of penalized facility, by
headquarters nation — even by penalties occurring under each of the last
four prime ministers.
The
broad offense categories are competition, consumer protection,
employment, environment, financial and safety. Competition-related
offenses account for the largest penalty total, £5.2 billion, reflecting
major bribery cases brought by the Serious Fraud Office and major
market manipulation cases brought by the Financial Conduct Authority.
Financial offenses rank second, with £2.8 billion in total monetary
penalties. Environmental and safety penalties lag far behind at £312
million and £413 million, respectively, reflecting the widespread use of
cautions and notices without fines by the Environment Agency and the
Health and Safety Executive.
Violation
Tracker UK’s parent universe includes companies headquartered in more
than 30 countries. After the UK, the headquarters country accounting for
the most monetary penalties is the United States. Its total of £1.4
billion comes mainly from big banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup,
and Goldman Sachs.
Violation
Tracker UK has benefitted from the guidance of an advisory group led by
Andy Agathangelou of the Transparency Task Force. Academic advisor
Aneesh Raghunandan of the London School of Economics played a key role
in planning the data collection effort. UK-based Anthony Kay Baggaley
was the lead researcher.
Good Jobs First,
founded in 1998 and based in Washington, DC, is a non-profit,
non-partisan resource center promoting government and corporate
accountability.
- Click on any chart below to see it online.
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