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The staff costs note is, in my critical opinion, useful for employees. From it they can work out the average salary of an employee. This can be used to inform the political debate within the organisation about the relatively pay differentials both within the organisation, and when compared to other organisations.

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The CEO's single figure remuneration is relevant to a stakeholder group: the employees. In the example set out below employees can see that the CEO received £1.2 million of remuneration in a year when M&S struggle to break even. The disclosure of this amount allows employees to consider, and debate, the ethics of the CEO receiving such a remuneration package, despite M&S having a poor year in performance terms.

Of note, however, is that the information does disclose the bonus figure. In my critical opinion, this is highly relevant, and useful. The information clearly shows that the CEO did not receive a bonus in the year. This, in my opinion, is an example of good reporting. It shows that the remuneration that the CEO was, in some way, matched to the comparatively poor performance of M&S in the year.

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This is mainly useful for shareholders in the company, allowing them a first glance at the performance of their investments. It does this in a way where it is not cluttered, meaning its an efficient way of looking at historic data. However, it links to further notes, which are needed to gain a full understanding of what it all means.

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Allows users to find to information elsewhere in the AR that is relevant to them, avoiding clutter. This improves the use-fullness of the AR in the sense that more stakeholders are able to use it efficiently.
the section dedicated to the business model is a concise two pages which easy to understand, and potential investors would find it the most useful as they can see where the business generates revenue and what markets they are dependant on.

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Relevant information for company valuation

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Relevant information for company valuation

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Many analysts value companies using a "Free Cash Flow valuation technique". This method attempts to predict the future operating cash flows of the business, whilst also attempting to consider what the future investing activities might be. The historic operating cash and investing cash flows are relevant and useful in providing an initial base figure for this valuation. In this sense the cash flow statement shown below provides highly relevant information that an analyst could use to begin to value a company. However, a downside of the information presented is that it is not future looking, and the analyst cannot perform a thorough valuation by simply using the historic looking cash flow data shown below.

In my critical opinion, this is an example of both relevant and useful information. However, the information is not complete for the purposes of which I have written about, namely producing a thorough company valuation from a shareholders/analysis perspective.

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Relevance of the opening comments of the Chair's letter to shareholders

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Relevance of the opening comments of the Chair's letter to shareholders

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The relevance of this opening statement might be understood in at least one of two ways. The Annual Report and Accounts is an inherently backward looking, and historic document. However, here the Chair focuses the shareholder's mind on what happened to M&S after the year end. For some shareholders this forward looking perspective might be considered to be more relevant that a careful consideration of what did happen in the year being reported upon. However, for other shareholders the forward looking focus might be more relevant. Alternatively, it might be argued that M&S would have had significant problems, even if COVID had not struck, and so a third perspective would argue that the Chair is using COVID to deflect attention away from the problems within the M&S business.

Assessing the usefulness and quality of corporate reporting will always be an interpretive exercise, more than a normative box ticking task. In my critical opinion I feel that this simple opener to the M&S Chair's letter provides a helpful example of how challenging it can be to give a definitive answer as to whether or not one specific piece of reporting is categorically "good" or "bad".