Trends in Corporate Reporting*

The trend towards mandatory ‘narrative’ reporting that we identified in Trends 2005 last year has continued. In this section of the site, we examine the common themes that are now emerging from the various requirements and which help to address the following questions:

• Who is the key audience for narrative reporting?
• Is there a set of principles that management should follow when preparing narrative reports?
• Is there a framework for determining the content to be included in narrative reports?

We find that these common themes are increasingly pervasive and well-founded as well as being consistent with PricewaterhouseCoopers' own research and with our practical experience in identifying examples of good practice in corporate reporting over the best part of the past decade. Our review of recent trends focuses on one paper, The IASB Management Commentary Disucssion Paper, which pulls together many of these common threads and which is based on a review of guidance and requirements across several jurisdictions.