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Reliance annual report ranked 23rd in Asia, 1st in India
Our correspondent in Mumbai |
March 17, 2003 17:05 IST
Reliance Industries Limited's annual report for the year 2001-02 has been featured in the top 25 best annual reports in Asia, according to a survey conducted by CFO Asia, a leading finance magazine published by The Economist Group.
Reliance's annual report was ranked 23rd in Asia and first among Indian companies. Rolta India, ranked 25th in Asia, occupied the second place among Indian companies, while Infosys was placed fourth among the Indian companies on the list.
A total of 15 Indian companies found a place in the published list of 105 companies.
CFO Asia did the annual report survey in partnership with a Belgium based reports evaluator, Enterprise.com, part of US based Corporate Essentials.
The survey judges the annual reports of the companies in various categories such as business overview, executive statement, financial highlights, financial review, governance, risk factors, social and environmental responsibility, design and visual, and report theme.
In Asia, Japan's Sony Corp was ranked the first, while CLP Holdings of Hong Kong occupied the second place, followed by United Overseas Bank of Singapore has secured the third place for the best annual reports.
Japan had the highest number of companies on the list, with 30 out of the 105 companies on the list. Hong Kong was at the second place with 22 companies, India third with 15 companies and Singapore fourth with 12 companies finding a place in the list.
This year 144 companies from all over Asia participated in the survey. Of the 144 companies only 40 companies achieved half the maximum score, and only 5 Indian companies featured in this list of 40.
Reliance's 2001-02 annual report, though, was slightly delayed and released only in October 2002. A Reliance spokeperson said that the delay was on account of the merger of Reliance Petroleum Limited with Reliance Industries Limited whose approval was granted only in September by the Gujarat High Court.
The 2001-02 annual report was designed as a tribute to Dhirubhai Ambani, founder chairman of Reliance, who had passed away in July 2002, with the first 23 pages of the annual report featuring him.
The rest of the report has been split into two parts: financial statements, auditor reports, director reports etc which formed the statutory requirement and analysis, graphs and other details which were the non-statutory details.It is non-statutory part where Reliance scored over its peers. Graphical representations and charts were plentiful in order to help readers understand the numbers better.
"There were lots of graphs in the report. We had given turnover, total no of employees, key ratios like earnings per share, profit after tax, dividend per share in graphical detail over the last 10 years to help readers do a comparative analysis," says a Reliance spokesperson.Under the non-statutory part, Reliance had carried reports of the major developments in the company last year, including the acquisition of IPCL, the merger of RPL with RIL and the corporate governance initiatives that were undertaken.
The total report was 115 pages, with 70 pages dedicated to statutory requirements and the tribute to Dhirubhai Ambani and 45 pages to management discussions, analysis and other initiatives of the company.
Ranked number four, the Infosys Technologies' annual report too has long been considered as a single stop for everything you always wanted to know about India's best-run company. Its report has been hailed by Nasdaq as a benchmark in corporate transparency.
Infosys' annual reports is also high on detail revealing information like what percentage of applicants receive offers from the company, how the average age of the employees has changed, an education index of its staff and even a breakdown of the value added per software engineer.
Best annual reports in Asia: