The EU Issuers’ Accounting Disclosure Regime and Investors’ Information Needs. The Essential Role of Narrative Reporting

Within the EU investor protection framework, issuers are required to provide different investor groups with relevant information. Nevertheless, the issuers' accounting regime seems to be inconsistent with this regulatory approach. Due to their ever increasing complexity, IAS/IFRS are not suitable to meet investors' needs and can lead to an information overload, to which also sophisticated institutional investors are exposed. The article looks at the UK “strategic report” model and argues that the narrative component of financial reports can play a key role in rendering financial reports more informative and more suited to meeting information needs of different groups of users by diversifying information directed at sophisticated and unsophisticated investors. The article outlines the framework of a possible EU (more) harmonized framework in the area of narrative reporting, arguing that the ESMA can foster harmonization by providing guidelines on the enforcement of narrative reporting and (following the example of the Financial Reporting Council) promoting proactive activities aimed at developing guidance and recommendations on the contents and format of narrative reporting