The Value Reporting Revolution: Moving Beyond the Earnings Game

Provides a comprehensive framework for achieving higher levels of corporate information disclosure and transparency In order to decide whether or not a company is a good investment, analysts and investment professionals need to know as much as possible about the company's tangible and intangible assets, as well as a variety of critical performance measures. Written by an international team of experts, The Value Reporting Revolution clearly explains why corporations must move toward greater transparency and, more importantly, it provides a comprehensive framework for achieving that goal. Among other important lessons, readers learn how to identify the gaps between how corporate managers perceive their disclosure practices versus how the markets see them, as well as how to leverage their organizations' electronic communications technology and tools to ensure easy access to vital information and more meaningful data analysis. Robert Eccles (Jupiter, FL) is President of Advisory Capital Partners, Inc. Robert H. Herz (New York, NY) is a Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, US. David Phillips (London, UK) is a Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, UK. Mary M. Keegan (London, UK) is head of Global Corporate Reporting at PricewaterhouseCoopers, UK.

ROBERT G. ECCELES Dr. Eccles is a founder and President of Advisory Capital Partners, Inc. and a Senior Fellow of PricewaterhouseCoopers. He was a tenured professor at the Harvard Business School, where he served on the faculty for 14 years. While there, one of his major research interests was performance measurement and reporting. Dr. Eccles received his undergraduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his Ph.D. from Harvard University. ROBERT H. HERZ A partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, Robert Herz is the firm's North America Leader of Professional, Technical, Risk, and Quality. His professional service includes positions on the FASB's Emerging Issues and Financial Instruments Task Forces, the Financial Accounting Standards Committee of the American Accounting Association, and chair of the SEC Regulations Committee of the AICPA. He is a U.S. Certified Public Accountant and a U.K. Chartered Accountant. E. MARY KEEGAN Mary Keegan coauthored this book as Head of the Global Corporate Reporting Group of PricewaterhouseCoopers, where she specialized in international corporate governance and reporting. She has also served as Vice President of the F?d?ration des Experts Comptables Europ?ens and as a member of the IASC's Standing Interpretations Committee. She is now the Chairman of the U.K. Accounting Standards Board. DAVID M. H. PHILLIPS David Phillips is a partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers in the Assurance/Business Advisory Services practice in the United Kingdom and serves as the European Leader of ValueReporting. He is a graduate of Nottingham University, where he read Industrial Economics, and is a U.K. CharteredAccountant.

Even with the recent drop-off in stock prices, there's still great variation in how financial markets are valuing companies. To add more predictability to valuations, says this team of authors from PricewaterhouseCoopers, companies should take the initiative and publicize the nonfinancial measures that can drive future success. Otherwise, they say, analysts and individual investors will rely on their own estimates, which inevitably either undervalue a company or set it up for a fall. The main trouble, they find, lies not in disagreements over the key drivers but in executives' age-old reluctance to divulge information. The book covers these important debates, as well as the shifting world of accounting principles and oversight, in a comprehensive fashion and with clear prose. Yet while parts of this lengthy, lopsided book are full of detail, the case studies of companies actually experimenting with new metrics are surprisingly thin.
--The Harvard Business Review

Preface.

Foreword.

PREPARING FOR THE REVOLUTION.

Prologue: A Manifesto for the Second Revolution.

Common Sense.

A SURVEY OF THE BATTLEFIELD.

Where Has All the Value Gone?

Analyze This.

The Earnings Game.

The False Prophet of Earnings.

Inside the Exciting World of Accounting Standards.

BATTLES THAT MUST BE WON.

Out, Out Damned Gap!

Risky Business.

There Is No Alternative: The Story of Shell.

HOW SWEET IT IS.

To the Victor Go the Spoils.

Can You See Clearly Now?

PART OF THE SOLUTION OR PART OF THE PROBLEM?

Get on Board.

Standard Setters.

Should You See an Analyst?

NOTHING CAN STOP US NOW.

Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money.

Epilogue: A Call to Arms.

Notes.

Index.