Korea Times reported that POSCO and Samsung Electronics have made the list of the top 100 most sustainable conglomerates in the world.

POSCO, the world's third largest steelmaker, ranked 30th while Samsung, the foremost global maker of memory chips and smart phones was 73rd.

The list was announced by Corporate Knights, a Canadian magazine for clean capitalism, during the annual conference of the World Economic Forum currently underway in Davos in Switzerland.

POSCO, headed by chairman Mr Chung Joon yang, became the only steelmaker in the world to make the cut. The Pohang based company was also selected in the rankings two years ago, coming 93rd.

Samsung has joined the global 100 corporations for the third straight year after being positioned 91st and 93rd in 2010 and 2011 respectively.

The global 100 firms are named on the basis of 11 key performance indicators: energy productivity; carbon productivity: revenue per metric ton of direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions; water productivity; waste productivity; leadership diversity; clean capitalism pay links; tax paid; CEO average worker pay; safety productivity; innovation capacity; and employee turnover.

Clean capitalism pay links check whether or not at least one senior executive's compensation is tied to clean capitalism themed performance targets.

Danish pharmaceutical firm Novo Nordisk topped the list with cosmetics firm Natura Cosmeticos of Brazil and Norwegian energy company Statoil rounding out the top three.

The list included companies from 22 countries encompassing all sectors of the economy, with the United Kingdom leading the way with 16 entries, followed by Japan with 11.

(Sourced from www.koreatimes.co.kr)