Today LBG España (http://www.lbg.es/) has been presented in Madrid, a group of companies leaders in the field of community investment that are going to implement the London Benchmarking Group (LBG) model for measuring and communicating corporate community investment.

Initially LBG España is formed by nine major companies, leaders for their community investments: abertis, Agbar, Barclays España, BBVA, Ferrovial, Gas Natural, Iberdrola, RepsolYPF and Telefónica, under the coordination of the consultants MAS Business to implement the model.

The London Benchmarking Group was founded in 1994 by a group of UK multinationals, which wanted to advance form a corporate philanthropically approach to one focussed on integrating strategic community investment with business management. Soon it became apparent that to be able to manage well first it was necessary to have a good measurement system, and hence the LBG model was developed to classify and measure the contributions and the impacts these generate in the community, which enables companies to focus their resources on those initiatives with the greatest social value.

On the other hand, the companies adopting LBG communicate their achievements in relation to community investment in a homogeneous and transparent manner which facilitates the relation with their stakeholders which benefit from better information with regards to the contributions and impacts. The participants of LBG España will begin reporting their achievements with regards to their community involvement in accordance with the model from their 2007 CSR/Sustainability reports.

LBG España is part of the network LBG International (http://www.lbg-international.com/), in which participate also groups in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and the Czech Republic, amongst others.  As of today, more than 180 companies in the World have adopted the LBG model, amongst others Barclays Plc, Cadbury Schweppes, GlaxoSmithKline, L’Oreal, Nokia, Procter&Gamble, Shell or Unilever.

LBG has become the global reference for managing and reporting on corporate community investment activities.  From now on, LBG España is open to other organisations so that the model also becomes the most widely used in Spain.