IBA-WG Response to the OECD Consultation on an Update of the Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises

The IBA Working Group on the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (“IBA WG”) responded in November to a call for consultation from the UK Department of Business Innovation & Skills (BIS). A response was subsequently submitted to the BIS. Click here to view this response and its executive summary.  Thereafter, the IBA WG was invited to prepare and directly submit a response to the OECD (“OECD Consultation”). The OECD Consultation provided the IBA WG with more time to deliberate and expand on many of the suggestions made to the BIS. The IBA WG submitted its response on 29 January 2010.

The priority areas highlighted by the OECD Consultation were similar to those highlighted by the BIS, with a few exceptions. Generally, much of the IBA WG’s conclusions mirrored those made in the report to the BIS. However, the WG comments were expanded and developed and a new section on anti-corruption was also included, as requested by the terms of reference of the OECD Consultation. Where there were dissimilarities between the WG's BIS submission and this new response, the issues were placed in a section entitled “Other Issues”.

The WG was chaired by John F. Sherman III, Co-Chair of the IBA-Corporate Social Responsibility Committee and was composed of IBA members from the following committees: Corporate Social Responsibility, Tax, Mining Law, Oil and Gas Law, Human Rights, Corporate and M&A, Business Crime, Environmental Law, and the Corporate Counsel Forum. A list of the members of the WG can be found in Annex 1 of the submission.

The OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises can be found here.

The OECD Consultation can be found here.

The full IBA WG response can be found here.

For more information, please contact Gonzalo Guzman, IBA Project Lawyer, at gonzalo.guzman@int-bar.org