XPRL needed

COMPANYNEWSGROUP - CONTACTS - www.companynewsgroup.com makes a number of points about Europaen financial reporting. The news is better but it highlights the need to integrate XPRL with XBRL in financial reporting.

Generally speaking, this year listed companies have improved the quality of their Investor Relations websites. There is a 15% increase in results over all of the indexes studied and a 20% increase over the indexes in the Euronext zone.

Also noticeable this year is the appearance of new practices such as financial glossaries, business-sector statistics, Investor Relations forums and RSS feeds.

European listed companies have very good practices when it comes to publishing their basic data: 100% of companies put their press releases and annual reports online and 96% have a section on "corporate governance" for their investors.

We also note that 95% of companies give their market price on their website and 65% place it directly on their homepage.

This year has shown an improvement in websites' interactivity. Companies are making increasing use of dynamic documents and rebroadcasting audio/video of their financial events: 55% of companies offer their annual report in Html/Flash format, 65% broadcast the webcast of their analysts' meetings and 30% rebroadcast their Shareholders' Meetings online.

With regard to interactive services, although 65% of the sites studied offer press releases via email, only 30% make it possible to receive email alerts for financial events and 34% of companies offer a portfolio-simulator service.

The comprehensiveness of the information given on companies' websites is generally satisfactory: 93% of companies disclose information concerning analysts' meetings and 87% disclose information concerning Shareholders' Meetings. Although 75% of companies publish management biographies, they are less willing to disclose management dealings (26%) and management compensation (24%).

We also note that tools linked to market price are little used by companies: 35% provide a technical analysis tool, 25% enable comparison of their market price to that of their competitors and 9% have a market-price graphic linked to the news.

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