US falls behind rivals over annual reports.

Financial News, October, 2002

US companies lag behind many of their international counterparts in the amount of information disclosed in their annual reports, according to Standard & Poor's. However, overall disclosure levels rank highly among US corporates.Leo O'Neill, president of S&P, which launched a range of corporate governance evaluation tools on Tuesday, said the more extensive the annual report disclosure, the lower the market risk and the higher the price to book ratio.

Of 400 US companies analysed by S&P only seven earned more than six out of a possible 10 points for transparency and disclosure in annual reports.