"It wasn't a very good year, 2002" Call me pessimistic, but I'm afraid—other than a strong nucleus of annual report preparers for whom this task is almost sacred—most annuals we'll see henceforth will warrant the description "down and dirty." A corporation's prime communications tool, relegated to "no more than the absolute minimum we're required to produce," in the perceived pronouncements of many (if not most) corporate executives. Men (and, infrequently, women) for whom the annual report to shareholders, while it may be the key corporate communiqué, is a mystery. Financial types who don't cotton to public communications; they're busy trying to keep their heads out of the noose of various government agencies, let alone communicate with what they doubtless view as "silly old ladies, or their grandkids, who own a handful of shares in our company; I couldn't care less about them." This begins my 21st year at this stand...monitoring the world's annual reports to shareholders of publicly held companies. This past year, I received roughly a third as many 2001 reports to analyze as a decade earlier—among the 1991 crop. That's a sign (1) fewer companies exist today and (2) fewer are willing to have their key corporate communiqué evaluated for the entire world to see. Among 2001 reports, honesty sunk to a new low—to just over four in five reports. Some years—among 1995 reports, for example—more than nine in 10 were assessed as sufficiently forthright. (First year this element was monitored, among 1988 annuals, 88%, 10% more than currently, were seen as sufficiently forthright.) Bottom line: More top-flight professional communicators are at the helm of a precious few annual reports. Men and women for whom this is an almost-sacred assignment, a task coveted by the select few. Most, though, have any high aspirations subverted by the reality: that most financial types don't get it, don't understand the wide-ranging benefit of a good annual report—one that communicates openly and completely to both professional investors and individuals. The financial types forget, perhaps, that those who invest in Tyson stock also may be encouraged to buy the company's many products, to support management in its battles with, say, environmental bodies. Financial types don't comprehend (excepting broad-based, enlightened executives like my friend Tom Sandeman) that a crisp communications vehicle may help recruit dedicated, honest, loyal employees. The news media as well gets its perception of a corporation by the quality, and forthrightness, of its annual report to shareholders. Thereby influencing—for better or worse, depending on the corporation's print piece—the caliber of news coverage. Bottom line is that the year's annuals averaged a 6.9% Cato Positive Index, indicative of the presence, or absence, of 36 indicators of a report's positive or negative nature (www.sidcato.com/criteria.htm) That average positive rating of the world's annuals is the lowest since 5.6% among 1995 reports, seven years prior. It's less than half the 1997 CPI of 14%. Meaning, in five years, reports are half so positive, so complete, so revealing of the company (and its achievements) whose name's on the cover. How low can you go? Addendum: Of the one in five last year to take the 10-K route, or produce a two-part document, without so identifying it on the report cover, 83.7% didn’t disclose the document’s abbreviated nature—that is, warn the recipient that the document essentially wasn’t complete. By my standards, at least.

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