Samsung Electronics and POSCO have been included in the top 100 of the world’s most sustainable large companies, Canadian business paper Corporate Knights announced Thursday.

Samsung ranked 73th, rising 20 spots from last year. POSCO secured the No. 30 slot, positioning itself as the only steelmaker to have put its name on the list released at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland.

The 2012 Global 100 list isolates the top 10 percent of companies from 3,500 global stocks, which were then ranked based on 11 indicators.

This year, Britain leads the list with its 16 firms included in the 100 finalists, followed by Japan, France and the U.S.

The top-ranked firm for 2012 is Novo Nordisk, a Danish pharmaceutical firm, which sells human insulin to 33 of the world’s poorest countries at 20 percent of the average price.

Toby Heaps, CEO of Corporate Knights, says, “in a year in which Wall Street was occupied and capitalism became a bad word, the Global 100 companies serve as ambassadors for a better, cleaner kind of capitalism which, it also turns out, is more profitable.”

From its inception in 2005 to 2011, the Global 100 list firms achieved a total return of 41.70 percent, outperforming its benchmark by more than 11 percent, the company said in a statement.

(insight@heraldcorp.com)