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Lookup NU author(s): Professor David Campbell
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This research report is about the voluntary narrative sections of company annual reports with particular reference to the annual reports of UK banks. Voluntary narratives are defined as those parts of the annual report not mandated by Companies Act requirements or listing rules and not reported on as part of the audit report. Such disclosure narratives include, inter alia, the chairman’s statement, chief executive’s review, social and environmental reports, and risk disclosures. There is an academic literature that has examined the patterns of voluntary disclosure and these contributions have fallen crudely into three general categories: empirical studies examining trends and changes in reporting, theory building and testing contributions, and user-needs analyses. It is to this latter strand of literature that this study aims to make a contribution. There has been a marked growth in many types of voluntary and narrative reporting in recent years with media other than the hard copy annual reports in the ascendant as carriers of reporting messages. Despite this growth, large companies continue to produce elaborate, lengthy and detailed annual reports with narrative sections extending to, in some cases, hundreds of pages. The annual reports for 2006 of HSBC Holdings plc and Barclays plc were 458 pages and 310 pages respectively. One of the questions frequently raised, but not well answered, in considering this growth is the actual usefulness of this surfeit of narrative in annual reports. Who reads it, is the information useful and is it material to fund allocation decisions made by investors? And if not, what are the implications for preparers of annual reports?
Author(s): Campbell DJ, Slack RE
Publication type: Report
Publication status: Published
Series Title:
Year: 2008
Pages: 32
Print publication date: 01/01/2008
Source Publication Date: 2008
Report Number: 104
Institution: Association of Chartered Certified Accountants
Place Published: London
URL: http://www.accaglobal.com/pubs/general/activities/research/research_archive/rr-104-001.pdf
Notes: Launched at a high profile event at the British Library on 6th November 2008 with a panel comprising the authors and senior representatives from HSBC, the FRS and Axa. Numerous invitations to speak have arisen from the publication of this monograph as evidence of its impact (including staff seminars at the universities of Tasmania and Sydney in Nov 2008)
