Who owns the annual report?

[Corporatepreggolady]

Hello, just interested to know how other companies do it. If you work for a big listed company (I'm thinking FTSE firm or similar size), who in your org "owns" the annual report? Finance, Comms, corporate affairs?

Finance - Group CFO has overall responsibility for it.

I'm public sector but large org. It's varied depending on structure for me - previously owned them in finance, another in corporate governance, latest one is sort of jointly owned by the lot of us, but that works okay as we're in a big "corporate services" type area. (editing because having said it's jointly owned, if something needs doing and no one else does it, it ends up with finance, which I guess means finance own it...)

It’s a finance document that others gloss up for the audience, so it’s finance.

Interesting. In my org, Comms owns it, but it's so financial in nature that inevitably we end up doing things we shouldn't and aren't qualified to do (e.g, arguing about nominals with our auditor).
Good to know that it's typically owned by Finance in other places.

Investor relations owned it in terms of delivery/ proofing/ formatting etc. but finance obviously had to give a lot of input and time.

Finance own the back half. Various others own the front half with all the wooly bits re corporate governance ESG etc. I've no idea who's benefit the front half is for really

I’ve worked in investor relations consultancy so seen a lot of different annual reports produced… and I’ve never seen the comms team responsible for any details. Writing the Chair/CEO report, organising design etc, yes. But what you’re describing seems unusual and risky!

CFO.

Group finance own the whole document at my company. They get a lot of input from investor relations etc for the front half though.

Corporate governance owns it but acts as a project co-ordinator. Different depts then responsible for their own sections so Finance owns the accounts etc

Comms ‘own’ it but each dept has to do their section.

GFD here, but lots of contributors.

Interesting. Feels like it should be owned by either governance or finance, as pp has said, with Comms writing some of the strategy section, proofing it and getting it designed.

We don't have an investor relations team, which is possibly where we fall down

This is pretty much what happens for us. Finance owns, comms fluffs it up, governance checks it over but finance has the overall ownership.

Oh and one more while you're all here! How does anyone get it designed in time for announcement day? Ours was changing until the final minute, so obviously impossible to get an external designer/proofer to work on properly. Lots of companies seem to announce, and then follow up with a "glossy" annual report about a month later in the run up to their AGM

But other companies do seem to go live with the glossy, and I can't fathom how

We have an external consultancy looking after the style of it from prior to the year end and have professional proofreaders in the final week before publication.

It is very much changing right up until midnight on the day of publication but we just have to accept that some bits will not be properly proofread.

It's hideous that these things change right up until midnight. If this were an ad campaign or something, all the assets would need to be final well in advance of live day. I worry there simply isn't enough time when things stop moving to properly review the doc in entirety. For proofing, for legal review, for consistency of numbers although the auditor should pick that up

My company works like this for everything so the report is no different. Ad’s, packaging, product design is all done right up to the deadline it’s just super fast paced and ever changing so no one really feels any different about this.

We have an internal design team, so we do everything in the non-glossy doc and then any final changes we put through last-minute.com. I get properly arsey about any changes after we've done the first glossy draft, as then we have to mark up the glossy one with every individual change. So no one gets stylistic/wording ones after the first glossy draft, only changes required by audit, or if we spot factual errors/typos.

Why are earth are you arguing about nominals, with the auditor. That's not your job. Thats finance's job, and even with them there should be no arguments about nominals at this late stage.

The auditors are usually the ones asking for the changes!! It's all very tightly controlled with every last minute change "black lined " and signed off. But yes I hate it. There's always a fucking typo you spot just after it's gone.