Transparent and accountable corporate reporting is crucial to maintaining healthy relations between for-profit companies and the social, environmental and economic contexts those companies operate in. The results of our Project ReportingNZ scoping exercise shows there may be an information gap between the needs of stakeholders and the needs of specific shareholders.
Interestingly, we discovered that the annual reports of 83 of the companies listed on the Deloitte 2016 Top 200 Rankings (by revenue) only disclose their financial statements. This is because of an available concession in
the Companies Act 1993 that allows companies to opt out of disclosing additional information. This means 41.5% of the Deloitte 2016 Top 200 Rankings do not have to publish information on their remunerations, donations, and the names of the directors.
Have your say on this and other reporting issues in our Extended External Reporting User Survey.
The survey asks consumers, employees, investors, members of the community and other stakeholders to assess the current reporting landscape and to evaluate what is or is not working and what might be missing. The survey will take approximately 15–20 minutes to complete and closes at 5pm on Monday, 17 July 2017.
The responses from the user survey will inform the recommendations to be put forward in Report 17 – Creating A Reporting Landscape Fit For Purpose, which we hope to publish in December 2017.
If you have questions about the survey or any other matters, please contact our Head of Research, Sally Hett by email sh@mcguinnessinstitute.org or by phone +64 4 499 8888.
Project ReportingNZ in 2017
The purpose of Project ReportingNZ is to contribute to an informed society through better access to, and assessment of, information in the public interest. The user survey forms part of the second stage of our extended external reporting research project. We have also surveyed the CFOs of significant New Zealand companies (The 2016 Deloitte Top 200 and NZX [main board] listed companies). Both surveys are a collaboration with the External Reporting Board (XRB).
The first stage of the research project was the scoping exercise, the results of which will be published in Working Paper 2017/05 – Analysis of the Existing External Reporting Landscape: Infographics of significant companies operating in New Zealand on the McGuinness Institute publications page later in the year. Keep an eye on our Project ReportingNZ website for updates.