The adoption by the Accounting Standards Board of its Statement of Principles for Financial Reporting in December 1999 means that we now have an authoritative conceptual framework which should govern the production of British financial statements. Yet while the text of the Statement is directed...

This paper examines whether poorly performingcompanies use textual complexity to obfuscatein the Operating and Financial Review (OFR) andthus undermine effective communication and goodgovernance. Prior research on the obfuscationhypothesis has reached confused andcontradictory conclusions. The...