And, now, Sid Cato believes his reservations were justified. In the July issue of his Newsletter on Annual Reports—published monthly since September 1983—Cato noted that when San Francisco-based McKesson Corp. in 1987 produced the world’s first summary report, which Cato named "world’s worst" in Chief Executive, he quoted respected financial author Thornton L. O’glove as saying the summary document "presented the potential for the massive manipulation of facts; management gets to pick and choose what to include, what to leave out."

Now, Cato said, his skepticism has been justified with the resignation (the third week in June) of McKesson’s top management—its chairman, its chief executive officer and five other top executives in what The Wall Street Journal called "a widening accounting scandal" involving an acquired unit, "one of the industry’s biggest success stories too good to be true," in the words of an analyst quoted by the newspaper.

Said Cato: "To me, McKesson has shown firsthand the negative potential of the SAR."