Reporting and Disclosure Arbitrage
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 December 2025
This chapter explores a largely overlooked dimension of jurisdictional arbitrage: the manipulation of corporate reporting and disclosure practices at the subsidiary level. While much of the literature focuses on multinational corporations (MNCs) as unified entities, this chapter demonstrates that opacity is often engineered through the dispersed structure of CCMCEs. Drawing on data from the CORPLINK project, it analyses how MNCs exploit jurisdictional inconsistencies in disclosure rules to limit financial transparency, particularly in OFCs. Key strategies include the use of exempted companies, off-balance-sheet entities, disappearing or floating subsidiaries, and shell companies mimicking dormancy. These techniques allow firms to circumvent consolidated reporting obligations, distort public and regulatory perceptions, and obscure the allocation of revenues and profits. Comparative data on independent versus integrated energy firms further illustrates how these practices are unequally distributed and systematically deployed. The chapter calls attention to the inadequacy of current regulatory frameworks and urges international action to standardize disclosure quality and reduce informational blind spots. By revealing how MNCs ‘tell without telling’, the chapter advances our understanding of corporate opacity as a strategic, institutionalized practice deeply embedded in global corporate structuring.
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