We wish we could force every corporate official and regulator to re-read Hans Christian Andersen’s fable of the emperor’s new clothes. In that tale, two fast-talking weavers convince the emperor to wear a “suit” that is invisible when worn by an incompetent. Everyone in the kingdom pretends to see the suit, until a child points out the obvious.
Welcome to the current state of corporate disclosure. Yes, there are some areas of adequate disclosure such as the financial statements, though even they could use some tweaking. However, all too often disclosures are either anodyne boilerplate or—even worse—non-existent.
