Value and risk reporting practice among listed companies in Belgium.

Abstract

In this report we describe the general practices, among Belgian public firms, re voluntary disclosure. We provide an overall score, a subtotal for each of ten information categories, and individual scores. We find that only two subtotals, Management & Performance and Organization & Strategy, fare rather well almost across the board. The value drivers, in contrast, tend to come in among the lowest-ranked items, as does Risk Management. For two value drivers, Brands and Customers, around half of the companies even remain utterly silent. Across firms, there often is a pronounced right-skewness among the rankings for one subcategory. On more than half the items that could logically help determine value, more than half of the firms provide no information whatsoever.The top-performing companies are doing spectacularly better on Risk Management, and (relatively) worse on macro information. Manufacturing firms do best, both in terms of total rating as well as on most subcategories, followed by retail/distribution/media (RDM) and then Technology.Optimal; Value; Risk; Reporting; Companies; Firms; Disclosure; Information; Management; Performance; Strategy; Risk management; Brands; Manufacturing;