DUBLIN:Trying to find the information you require from a company's annual report has never been easy. However, trying to get a feel for where the company is going from that report is even harder, says Kevin Egan, assurance leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers Ireland.

Any comments on future prospects for the company are few and far between in annual reports, meaning that if it's strategy guidance you are after then you are most definitely in the wrong place.

As a result, Pricewaterhou- seCoopers, with several other groups including the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, communications consultancy Radley Yeldar and Tomkins, a UK-based engineering company, have set up the Report Leadership Group to look at what Egan calls a "misalignment between information that investors want and can usefully use, and what is handed out".

"We need to know more about how a company intends to deliver strategy objectives . . . and more detail about the overall governance of the company."

While some of the information contained within annual reports can't be changed dramatically as a result of regulatory requirements, Egan believes it is time to start a debate on the issue.

For more, go to: www.reportleadership.com