What better way to encourage companies to cut down on the complexity and verbosity of their corporate reports than to issue a 64-page discussion paper on the subject?
The Financial Reporting Council, the UK’s independent regulator for promoting confidence in corporate governance and reporting, has done just that. (There is, however, also a shortish 20-page version).
Here are some of the FRC’s tips for making reports more interesting and engaging:
* Try to write a compelling story using a narrative sequence with a beginning, a middle and an end
* Present key messages in pull quotes, titles, bullet points, sub-headings etc
* Don’t hide important information at the back of the report
Those being akin to recommending companies WRITE COGENTLY and DON’T TRY TO DECEIVE THEIR INVESTORS.
We should note, however, that the report is still worth reading if you are the type to spend hours scouring annual reports and agonising over the language used in trading statements. For instance, did you know that there are over 30 different expressions of probability thresholds embedded in IFRS literature, ranging from ‘remote’ to ‘probable’ to ‘virtually certain’? And according to the FRC they don’t necessarily mean different things.
Well, we were virtually certain of were reasonably certain of expected that suspected that might be the case, anyway