And the 100 Best Corporate Citizens 2009 are

Jay Whitehead has just announced the much-anticipated 100 Best Corporate Citizens 2009.

The top five companies in the List are:

1 Bristol Myers-Squibb
2 General Mills
3 IBM
4 Merck
5 HP

While this year’s most-respected corporate responsibility ranking features many repeat appearances by perennial leaders, 2009’s top-ten companies on the List include four dramatic comeback stories from past corporate responsibility challenges. They are Bristol Myers Squibb, Merck, HP and Mattel (#7).

Bristol Myers Squibb, Merck and HP sat in the 2008 List’s Penalty Box for regulator-mandated enforcement actions dating back to 2006. And Mattel sat out in 2008 for issues surrounding 2007 supply chain governance. Since then, each of the companies’ performance in Environment, Human Rights and Employee Relations in particular have earned them top spots on the 2009 List.

The performances of General Mills and IBM reflect newly-energized corporate responsibility, transparency and public disclosure efforts that build on consistently high levels of corporate citizenship practice, as both have made the List for nearly all of the past 10 years.

The 2009 List features the return of the lone 3 companies to be featured on all 10 years’ Lists: Cisco#6, Intel#13 and Starbucks#65.

The 2009 100 Best Corporate Citizens List® methodology, since it is based solely on publicly-available data, puts a premium on companies with high levels of public disclosure and transparency.

Three lessons from this year's List:

1. Transparency: Companies on the List have done a superior job in communicating their CR efforts.
2. Corporate citizenship makes financial sense.
3. Companies assign more corporate responsibility officers. The number of CROs is continuously growing.