Annual Reports - letter

I read with much interest recently a letter written to your papers by an eminent personality of the corporate world. The writer had taken the example of the SLT Annual Report, to make a point about what constitutes a good annual report fitting for the modern busy reader. The writer very correctly was pointing out the need for annual reports to give the essential facts in a way that the reader can get to them fast.

I am writing this letter to express my concern on seeing the annual report of a top financial institution. They had (unwittingly I assume) gone to great lengths (literally as well) to dilute the important facts in a barrage of various other information concocted through a volley of corporate superlatives, clichés, rhetoric ad trips of vanity. What took the cake was that they had literally couched the report in a messy and complicated folder of several parts.

Annual Reports communicate not only through the written word and the numbers. They tell much more about the quality of the top management by the non- verbal communication or the body language of Annual Reports.

(The writer is a senior Finance Director, now serving in a large public company overseas).