Value of effective communications rising

In a bid to boost their competitiveness - and success at deal making - Canadian companies are adopting increasingly sophisticated approaches to stakeholder engagement.

“Companies are paying a lot more attention to the potential risks of deals, which means they are trying to engage stakeholders early on the in the process and win their support.

Convincing shareholders that the deal is beneficial to them is a crucial element of transactions these days,” says Mr. Salmon. It’s also important to ensure that stakeholders receive information they can evaluate easily and accurately by using new technologies such as extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). XBRL is a language for the electronic communication of business and financial data. It provides major benefits in the preparation, analysis and communication of business information, and offers cost savings, greater efficiency and improved accuracy and reliability to all those involved in supplying or using financial data.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission recently proposed a mandatory XBRL filing program for U.S. and foreign issuers.

Tom Enright, president and CEO of CNW Group, a global leader in news and information distribution services for professional communicators, says the SEC’s proposal calls for a phased approach beginning with the largest U.S. filers defined as those with a worldwide public float of $5 billion US or higher.

“We will support Canadian companies that fall within the proposed SEC mandatory program and those that want to participate in the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) voluntary filing program to keep pace with their industry peers in the U.S.,” says Mr. Enright.

He says XBRL represents a new era of interactive disclosure that will benefit not only analysts who need to review and compare financial data, but also the financial markets as a whole by enhancing activities such as algorithmic trading.