Report Leadership

Report Leadership, a multi-stakeholder group, aims to challenge established thinking on corporate reporting. PricewaterhouseCoopers is working with the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) and Radley Yeldar to develop simple, practical ways to improve narrative and financial reporting.

Key initiatives to date include developing practical ideas on how to improve:

• narrative and financial reporting in annual reports
• executive remuneration reporting and
• online reporting.

Each initiative reflects input and feedback from a range of investors.

The publication outlines our initial thinking, which reflects input and feedback from a range of investors and is structured in two parts.

In Report Leadership's first initiative the group developed a series of ideas for improving the form and content of corporate reporting. The document focused on three areas: effective communication, modelling the future and rethinking the financials and was split into two parts.

Second, a fictitious annual report of a company called Generico, brings our ideas alive and illustrates how they can be addressed with creativity and thought. To make the ideas practical and realistic, the report focuses on what is achievable today within the current International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) model by improving disclosure and presentation of information.

You can also watch the Report Leadership video where David Phillips, senior corporate reporting partner, talks with members of the corporate, investor, accounting and design communities about their views on the current financial reporting model and the practical ideas set out in the publication.

Few topics in the field of corporate reporting generate as much interest and debate as executive remuneration. In this publication the group provide practical ideas for improving the communication of executive reward by focusing on better disclosure and presentation of key information and the adaptation of emerging best practice. Our aim is to make this reporting area more understandable to users, not to influence the way executive reward is structured.

Changing legislation and increasing investor awareness are creating a pull for more – and better – online reporting. It’s no longer good enough to post a hard copy report on the website. In this publication we look at what investors want from online reporting and how they might be put into practice via an online version of the Generico annual report, a hard copy of which was launched in 2006. To view the online version please visit www.reportleadership.com

The Report Leadership initiative aims to engender debate and motivate companies to adopt elements of the ideas presented. In this newsletter the group shares some of the developments since its launch and provides some best practice examples from recent annual reports.

You can help to shape the way the Report Leadership project evolves by giving your comments by actively participating or by adopting the elements that appeal to you. To find out more about the initiatives, keep informed of the group’s development or provide feedback on the ideas presented in these reports please go to www.reportleadership.com.