Last Thursday I moaned that 60 large companies were reporting results on the same day and asked what the flak trade had to say in defence of this shambles.
Why does this happen?
The flippant replies were: Because everyone wants to go on holiday, dummy.
Yes, I get that. But last Thursday wasn’t the only day in July. There are 22 other week days that month when PR and investor relations departments could have cleared the decks in time for August.
An honest flak admits: “Basically the earliest most companies could realistically announce HY results was 23rd (if management pushed finance and audit teams really hard to get numbers ready). But most of them aren’t organised enough, or don’t fancy working weekends through July to push this through. So basically the window for reporting is middle of last week, to the middle of this week.”
Hmm, but they could have a different end of half-year. Plenty of companies do. To repeat: how bad would this have to get before somebody said, stop!
Who would that person be?
