Refreshing perspectives from reporting’s safe pair of hands

by Tamara O’Brien, TMIL’s roving reporter

Online conferencing can be a test of anyone’s mettle. Even the simple act of getting into one can throw up unnerving challenges. As the ‘Please Wait’ dots do their umpteenth circuit, the appointed minute slips by and you wonder if you’re in the right bit of ether…do you cut your losses, click out and try again? Or will that throw off some delicate balance somewhere in the universe – I mean Cloud – and lock you out forever?

Happily, the technical glitch we experienced on Thursday’s Trust me, I’m listed webinar was soon sorted, and we 200+ audience wraiths streamed into the virtual theatre only a few minutes later than scheduled. 

It struck me that for today’s guests, unnerving, time-critical decisions are all in a day’s work.  

As company secretaries, Ben and Rachael are veterans of the intense, immersive, months-long experience otherwise known as producing the annual report. They’re the safe pair of hands every listed company needs to manage the report’s much-scrutinized governance and compliance aspects, and usually much more besides. As befits their safe-hands status, Rachael and Ben clearly enjoyed fielding some curve-ball questions from the webinar audience… but more of that later.

After whizzing through the book’s themes – why the annual report matters and how to do it well, including why ‘best practice’ is anathema to reporting – Claire introduced her guests as “two company secretaries who do indeed ‘do it well’.”

Their companies and therefore reporting approaches are very different, which made for a wide-ranging discussion.

The highly regulated, FTSE 100, dual-listed energy company

Co sec roles don’t come much bigger than that at BP. Ben runs the corporate reporting steering group, made up of representatives from across the company’s business, financial and geographical worlds.

While he explained how this multi-functional approach ensures every important detail is captured, both to cover regulatory requirements and tell the story of BP’s business and what it has been doing over the year – I couldn’t help but think of the logistics of arranging those meetings.

BP also has listings in the US and two other jurisdictions. The US 20F is a rigidly prescriptive document, all about the numbers: audiences look elsewhere for a company’s story, such as social media. In contrast, the UK reporting framework allows for commentary as long as it adheres to the ‘fair, balanced and understandable’ principle. Ben made it clear which approach he preferred, but spoke of both with equanimity. I imagine producing a 20F report to wrap around the AR is just another item on the Möbius strip that is BP’s corporate to-do list.

The niche, small-cap provider of professional-quality film and photographic equipment

Rachael cheerfully admits that Vitec is so niche that few people have heard of them. And yet the company is known in reporting circles for the quality of its AR. How so?

For Rachael, Vitec’s small size is the secret of its annual report’s success. Not having a dedicated marketing team – and being in the business of enabling broadcasters and photographers to create technically perfect images – has propelled Vitec’s AR into the marketing limelight. Through it, Vitec speaks directly to its investors, employees, customers and other stakeholders, simply by using its stock-in-trade – exceptional imagery. Smaller staff numbers also give the team a sense of ownership and collaboration on the AR project.

The conversation touched on how ARs build trust, and then it was over to audience questions. Beginning with this humdinger:

Q: Should the ‘annual report’ be retitled to engender a different approach?

After the merest heartbeat of a pause to figure out what the question might be getting at, our co secs caught and ran with it.

Rachael agreed that for Vitec, the AR is a source of [verified] content about the business, which they use on their website and in other media. Though she didn’t have an alternative descriptor to hand right that minute.

Ben pondered the meaning of time in the AR reporting cycle, taking us to a philosophical juncture we hadn’t quite expected. In the face of ever-growing demand for brevity, immediacy, real-time information… he saw value in a company drawing a line at a fixed point in the year, presenting a cross-section of the business at that point and letting audiences decide for themselves what they thought of it. On a practical note, he added that, like any co sec, he has the report within arm’s reach at all times – to answer the endless ‘where are these numbers’ questions.  

Questions on integrated reporting and the European Single Electronic Format were asked and duly discussed (“There’s a great ESEF case study in the book!” interjected Claire), and the session ended with another poser:

Q: What are your views on a text-only AR? Surveys suggest investors are distracted by visuals.

Rachael replied, somewhat drily, that their next report might well be text only, thanks to their AR budget being cut due to Covid. But it’s unlikely. A picture paints a thousand words, even for investors. Ben and Claire agreed, adding that design in corporate reporting isn’t just for decoration, it’s to help readers read.

And with that, we were spirited back to our lockdown lives. How much easier it is to leave than to join a meeting!

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