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MARSHALL, Mich., Oct. 1, 2002.—In the 20th year of publishing his monthly Newsletter on Annual Reports, Editor Sid Cato said he sees precious few positives concerning what he calls “the key corporate communiqué."
While Cato said 27 annuals for 2001 achieved "world-class" status, scoring at least 100 of a possible 135 points against his copyrighted criteria, "That's exactly half so many as made the grade eight years earlier"—among the 1993 crop of reports. Also, more than three dozen annuals—produced by corporations worldwide—were evaluated as "insufficiently forthright." Meaning, Cato said, "Companies failed to confront the bad news without delay or artifice." Does this mean CEOs are increasingly deceitful? "More likely it means that so many more companies had awful years, for the first time they had to handle such news as an earnings falloff. It was more than most could take." Cato said he assessed only 80.7% of 2001 reports as "sufficiently forthright—by my standards, that is"—lowest in the 13 years he has monitored this facet of annuals. |