A roundup of the annual symposium held by the Center for Corporate Reporting
Integrated reporting: hotly debated but not yet a reality. That’s the case in Switzerland, where trailblazers are few and far between. The Center for Corporate Reporting debated this issue at its annual Symposium in Zurich. This long-standing event draws more than 250 participants annually from corporate finance, communications and IR.
Keynote speaker Robert Eccles, a Harvard University professor, delighted the audience not only with his presentation but also with his heartfelt plea to establish integrated reporting. ‘I’m looking for at least one Swiss corporation to be the first one to… publish an integrated report. And I want this to be for the fiscal year 2015,’ he said provocatively.
According to Eccles, implementing integrated reporting is not as difficult as many corporate representatives would like to think – it’s just a matter of attitude and how you understand your business. Also, integrated reporting does not mean reporting on more topics than usual. On the contrary, it implies reporting on material issues and focusing on information that is relevant to stakeholders.
On the investors’ panel, Edoardo Gai from RobecoSAM, Ingo Speich from Union Investment and Christian Strenger from Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management, who is also an International Integrated Reporting Council board member, discussed the diverse reporting demands of investors.
What role does reporting play in influencing investment decisions? According to the speakers, a report can have a key role in decision-making, but content is more important than format. Investors require material, short, clear and concise information. Moreover, conformity in the company’s presentation of its business, as well as consistency with the previous year’s reporting, are crucial. In this way, comparability and thus reliable and transparent information to stakeholders can be ensured. The advocates of integrated reporting portrayed it as a possible means of meeting all those requirements in a long-term and sustainable way.
Workshop sessions in small groups completed the program. Christopher Greenwald, head of sustainability investing research at RobecoSAM, discussed the question of how non-financials influence the financial evaluation of companies. In his view it is crucial to understand how non-financials are inevitably linked to financial performance and are not just an add-on that people want to read about. Improving existing products with regard to their environmental performance, for example, could help companies exploit new market segments.
In other sessions, Noemi López Cervera, head of the integrated center for reporting at Gas Natural Fenosa, showcased her firm’s approach to integrated reporting. And Spiegel Online photojournalist Oliver Schmitt highlighted the importance of visual language in the context of CEO positioning and telling a consistent company and leadership story.
Kristin Köhler is chief executive of the Center for Corporate Reporting