Reporting Risk: A Study of Risk Disclosures in the Annual Reports of Public Companies in the UK.

This dissertation discusses the UK companies’ practices in disclosing risk-related information in their corporate annual reports. In particular, it addresses the issues of financial risk reporting and the use of value at risk as a measurement tool in the annual reports of UK public companies from the period of 2004 to 2008. The paper seeks to reveal if there is a correlation between the quantity of financial risk disclosures provided by companies and the size and industry of the sample companies. It explores risk disclosures within a sample of 40 UK company annual reports using content analysis. A significant association is found between the number of financial risk disclosures and company size. Similarly a significant association is found between the number of financial risk disclosures using VAR and type of industry. The study also shows that financial risk disclosure increase over the sample period. Literature on risk disclosure was also reviewed, discussing whether corporate risk disclosures are impositions on companies or a voluntary practice. Conclusions were drawn from the results and recommendations for further research are made