Because millions of people in New Zealand and around the world depend on our products, we have high standards for how we should conduct ourselves as a company.

Our chief compliance officer, who reports directly to the CEO, is responsible for ensuring high ethical standards and compliance across our business globally. This includes:

• making sure that the company complies with all applicable laws and regulations;
• through MSD's Office of Ethics, reinforcing the company's overall commitment to ethical business practices and behavior, at every level of the company; and
• safeguarding individual privacy expectations through oversight of our global privacy program.

In New Zealand, we have a locally appointed Compliance Officer. The role of the Compliance Officer in New Zealand is to ensure our global policies are integrated and implemented along with all local policies and regulation.

Our Office of Ethics supports our commitment to the highest standards of ethics and integrity in all of our business practices. We map out clear expectations for employees and hold them accountable for their behavior.

We also remain committed to operating openly and with integrity. We have taken significant steps to improve transparency such as committing to public disclosure of our financial support for healthcare organisations .

Operating Ethically and Transparently

We strive to apply the highest standards of ethics and integrity to everything we do. Our efforts include:

• Sales and Marketing: We're committed to providing appropriate and balanced information to doctors and other healthcare professionals to help them make better prescribing decisions for their patients. Our interactions with healthcare providers, other customers and consumers are governed by laws and regulations, and by our global code of conduct which includes standard business practices and compliance guidance. We take these responsibilities seriously and periodically evaluate our marketing, sales and advertising activities to ensure they align with the applicable laws, regulations and our company's policies and values.
• Clinical trials registration and disclosure: Conducting clinical trials is a critical step in determining if our products are safe and effective. We register our trials online when studies are initiated to make patients and healthcare providers aware of these trials. We also make study results of marketed products-regardless of the outcome
• Social and environmental responsibility: Our transparency efforts also extend to other important aspects of our operations such as our environmental performance, our efforts to expand access to our medicines and vaccines around the world and our progress on diversity in the workplace. Data on these and other key performance indicators are available in our latest corporate responsibility reports:

For more information about transparency at MSD, view our 2010 corporate responsibility report.