Finance Expert Proposes Integrated Reporting Revolution for Multinational Corporations

By Salami Adeyinka

Corporate reporting has long been criticized for its narrow focus on financial metrics, yet calls for broader transparency have struggled to gain traction. Stakeholders—investors, regulators, employees, civil society—increasingly demand insight into how companies manage non-financial risks, yet disclosure practices remain fragmented and inconsistent. This gap has become particularly acute for multinational corporations operating across diverse regulatory regimes and facing heightened scrutiny over environmental and governance practices.

Melvin J. Oshomegie, by early 2023 leading corporate finance operations at American Tower Corporation Nigeria, directed his analytical attention to this reporting challenge. His research on integrated reporting, synthesized from extensive literature across corporate governance, risk management, and international standards, proposes a model specifically designed to enhance policy risk transparency for multinationals. The framework reflects insights drawn from managing financial reporting for a global telecommunications infrastructure firm navigating complex regulatory environments across multiple African markets.

“Traditional financial reporting captures a narrow slice of corporate reality,” Oshomegie argues in his analysis. “It tells you about past performance but reveals little about future resilience, regulatory exposure, or stakeholder relationships.” His integrated reporting model attempts to address this by combining financial data with operational, regulatory, and reputational risk information in a unified framework. The goal is to provide stakeholders with a more complete picture of corporate performance and risk exposure.

The model’s emphasis on policy risk disclosure stems from Oshomegie’s observation that regulatory and political uncertainties increasingly drive corporate outcomes, yet remain poorly captured in conventional reporting. A sudden tariff imposition, a shift in tax enforcement, a change in licensing requirements—these policy decisions can dramatically affect profitability and strategy, yet often surface in corporate disclosures only after damage is done. His framework proposes structured mechanisms for surfacing policy risks proactively, enabling investors and managers to anticipate and respond to regulatory shifts.
Throughout 2022 and early 2023, Oshomegie had been navigating precisely these challenges at American Tower. His work conducting scenario analyses to assess policy change impacts, and developing predictive models for tax liabilities under evolving regulatory frameworks, provided concrete grounding for his reporting research. He witnessed firsthand how inadequate disclosure can obscure risks, and how better transparency can strengthen stakeholder confidence and inform strategic planning.

His integrated reporting model incorporates several distinctive features. It emphasizes multi-dimensional disclosure—capturing not just financial impacts but also how policy risks affect operations, workforce, and community relationships. It advocates for forward-looking reporting, using scenario analysis and predictive modeling to illuminate potential future states rather than merely documenting past outcomes. And it stresses stakeholder engagement as integral to reporting quality, recognizing that external perspectives often identify risks that internal processes miss.

The framework also confronts practical implementation challenges. Integrated reporting requires coordination across traditionally siloed corporate functions—finance, legal, compliance, operations, sustainability. It demands data infrastructure capable of capturing and synthesizing diverse information streams. And it necessitates cultural change, as organizations must overcome tendencies toward opacity and embrace transparency even when disclosures reveal vulnerabilities.

Oshomegie’s research engages with evolving global reporting standards, particularly frameworks developed by the International Integrated Reporting Council and Global Reporting Initiative. Rather than proposing an entirely new system, his model attempts to operationalize these principles specifically for policy risk transparency—translating general commitments to accountability into concrete disclosure mechanisms tailored to multinational corporate contexts.

What makes his contribution particularly relevant is its attention to the political economy of corporate reporting. Disclosure is never neutral; it affects stakeholder perceptions, regulatory scrutiny, and competitive positioning. His framework therefore recognizes that enhanced transparency must be balanced with legitimate concerns about commercial sensitivity and strategic confidentiality. The challenge is creating reporting systems that meaningfully inform stakeholders without compromising corporate strategy—a balance his model attempts to strike through careful attention to materiality, governance oversight, and stakeholder dialogue.