1.	Themes are nice to prattle about, but from a practical standpoint, not many companies agree they’re all that important—in the annual report to shareholders, that is. True or false? Answer: Sorry, false. More and more companies realize a theme is essential for the reader to "get a handle" on an otherwise-complicated tome. In fact, seven of 10 companies so far have assigned a theme to their 1998 reports. Not all such themes are tautly supported, though; one in four isn’t. You can be sure each of the 10 best fulfills that dual requirement—runs a theme and supports it "out the window."
	2.	While many may care about your standards concerning what makes a good annual report, that’s certainly not true where non-North American corporations are concerned. True or false? Answer: False, I guess you could say. Reuters among international companies does well, year after year. Some corporations based in Mexico, another in the Philippines, others in the Czech Republic, are striving to adhere to Sid Cato’s criteria, promulgated in 1984 and copyrighted, of course. Also, Canada’s Bruncor had the world’s best annual of anyone a year ago. On preliminary analysis, it’s among this year’s top five. And a German company, VEBA, just produced a report that fell but three points shy of "world-class" status.
	3.	The fiercest fight to produce better annuals exists between competitors in the various industries. True or false? Answer: True, to a degree. Ideally, "competition spurs the youth of America," as they used to say on the old radio show (for those of you who remember radio). Currently, CNA Financial, which essentially is an insurance company, has done its usual abject offering. By contrast, St. Paul Cos. again has done superbly. In fact, St. Paul was adhering to our advocacies as far back as its 1990 report. In pharmaceuticals, Merck’s report is far superior to Pfizer’s, which failed to meet even minimum standards of attractiveness.
	4.	Say it ain’t so, Sid: Surely you’re not an advocate of annual reports all having the theme "Creating value." True or false? Answer: Most assuredly, that’s true! I’m not. I’m against companies (one this year that comes to mind is Catellus Development) having "Creating value" or some such theme. It’s hackneyed, for one thing. For another, I believe a corporation should have creating shareholder value as but one of its goals and aspirations—not as its sole aim, and one it spotlights to the exclusion of all others.
	5.	Talk is cheap, as they say. No one really pays much attention to all your lofty pronouncements. True or false? Answer: Depends on your viewpoint: Each year, roughly four dozen firms do admirably with their annuals. But that’s maybe one in 10 to perform adequately. So I guess you could say that the answer, sadly, is true. Of the 249 reports analyzed to date (for 1998), only 11 – 4.4%—to my way of thinking are worth the expenditure of time and money involved. It was 6.1% among 1997 reports—meaning one in 16 producers last year earned his or her keep.