Interpreting company reports and accounts - Geoffrey Holmes

Published accounts are often not easy to understand and are sometimes downright misleading but, to those who know how to read them, they provide the most readily available source of information on a company's activities, its profitability and its prospects. This book guides the reader through the conventions and complexities of reports and accounts, explaining how to assess the financial and trading position of a company from year to year, how to spot undue risk-taking, where and how to look for clues on the quality of management and how to detect where window-dressing has been used to disguise poor results.In 1990 the authors wrote: 'Company accounting is currently in a state of flux, confusion and controversy'. It is now in much better shape. In ten years, 15 Financial Reporting Standards (FRSs), countless Financial Reporting Exposure Drafts (FREDs), a host of other documents, and, for the first time in the UK, an exposure draft Statement of Principles of Financial Reporting have been produced by the Accounting Standards Board (ASB).;Many earlier abuses have been prevented, and much more information now has to be disclosed, the use and purpose of which the authors seek to explain. But work still needs to be done. The final chapter of this edition examines the problems that remain, and the steps the ASB is taking to resolve them. The seventh edition has been fully updated to take account of the latest amendments in accounting rules. Reports and accounts have improved immeasurably over the last 20 years, and especially over the last ten. There is now so much information that it has become difficult to find one's way through the maze. To demonstrate the art or skill of picking one's way through a mass of data, Chapter 31: 'Putting it all together' takes readers step by step through the report and accounts of a well-known group (THE BODY SHOP).The AuthorsGeoffrey Holmes, FCA, FTII retired after more than 20 years as editor of Accountancy, the Journal of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, to devote his time to investment research. He has lectured and written regularly on the interpretation of reports and accounts for many years.;He is co-author, with Robin Dunham, of the companion volume Beyond the Balance Sheet.Alan Sugden is a graduate of the Royal Naval Staff College, Greenwich, and a Sloan Fellow of the London Business School. He spent 20 years in the City as an analyst and fund manager, running the then ?100m (now ?850m) Schroder Recovery Fund for several years. He is a former director of Schroder Investment Management.