A war of words is brewing in the United Kingdom—about how many words should go into corporate reports.
Britain’s top corporate regulator, the Financial Reporting Council, is stepping up complaints that companies are failing to deliver informative annual reports that shareholders can use. Writers of the reports are firing back that the reports have become expensive wastes of time, since nobody reads them anyway.
The FRC most recently voiced its concerns last June in a report titled “Louder Than Words.” It said “urgent change” was needed to “cut the clutter” out of financial reports and to address growing concerns about the complexity ...