Ethics

We encourage our employees to treat each other and the communities in which we operate with dignity, fairness and respect, and we expect our managers to lead by example in high standards of behaviour.

We are committed to a high level of transparency, consistent with good governance and commercial confidentiality. We also undertake our business with integrity, honesty and fairness at all times, as clearly stated in our statement of business practice, The way we work, in our guides such as our Business integrity guidance, and in our statement of procurement practice, The way we buy.

Further, we explicitly support the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights and we respect those conducting our operations around the world.

How we apply ethics at work

It is mandatory for all our employees to be trained and to adhere to all the policies contained in our statement of business practice, The way we work.

Since 2005, we have required all our general managers and above to train on our Business integrity guidance, which addresses areas such as political involvement, bribery, corruption and facilitation payments.

Every year, we ask each our businesses to complete a rigorous and comprehensive Internal Control Questionnaire (ICQ), to check that they are adhering to The way we work. In addition, we use our Compliance guidance programmes with regard to implementing our policies.

We also require our directors, senior management, financial managers and employees who prepare financial statements to conduct themselves with integrity and honesty, in accordance with the ethical standards of their professions.

In addition, we expect them to comply with our Antitrust policy and guidance to ensure that we adhere to our policy of free and fair competition wherever we operate.