The use of business reporting information by local investors

Abstract

As a result of the rapid advances in technology and the ever-increasing competition, traditional information systems employed by companies and the types of information companies use to manage their businesses are changing. This information will be ultimately contained in business reporting which therefore cannot be immune from the changes affecting the environment that it is supposed to depict. The scope of this dissertation is to study the use of business reporting information by local investors with a pronounced emphasis on the use of the annual report. This has been attained through a survey of local non-professional and professional investors and their advisors, which are analysed and presented to give a detailed picture of the local use of business reporting information. The study has shown that the level of non-professional accounting knowledge affects the purpose of annual report use and the extent of its interpretation, while the length of the annual report determines whether it is read or discarded by non-professionals. The study conducted on professional investors and advisors revealed that both consider the annual report essential to their analysis. The importance of the annual report as the medium which best condenses business information was highlighted by the fact that the annual report is predominantly used as a basis for client discussions by both user groups.