Corporate disclosure practices

Accounting is a system for getting information. Its goal is to help the people who use the information make good decisions by giving them the right information.

This goal is reached when information is shared or reported. Disclosure is when a company's annual report includes both quantitative and qualitative information about financial and non-financial matters. One would rather put money into a company that tells the truth than one that doesn't. In an open capital market, an investor's preference for a certain company's shares will raise the price of those shares. Full disclosure helps keep share prices from going up and down too much. In the past few years, people have talked and argued more and more about the state of corporate reporting. As annual reports have gotten longer and taken more time and effort to put together, the people who use them have become less happy with them.

The global financial crisis has made it clear what companies' reports are for and how well they do their jobs (ACCA Global, 2012).