Putting Performance into Context: Retail and Consumer Goods

February 2008

High-quality information on corporate activity is an essential ingredient for the successful functioning of today’s capital markets and the societies in which they operate. What is clear, however, is that the increasing complexity, and length, of financial reporting has also led to a greater emphasis on the non-financial and contextual information presented by companies.

In ‘Business Review: has it made a difference?’ we assessed the impact of the Business Review on the scope of narrative reporting in the UK. We looked at the reporting of the entire FTSE 350, making it one of the most extensive surveys of narrative reporting ever published in the UK.

This paper takes the results for Retail & Consumer Goods (R&C) companies and compares them with the wider FTSE 350. Of the companies surveyed, 54 came from the R&C sector, and the specific findings from this sector are set out in the report.