Warren Buffett on Full and Fair Disclosure

Full reporting means giving information that you would wish you to give if the positions were reversed. All the important facts are sought about current operations as well as the CEO's frank view of the long-term economic characteristics of the business. Financial details are expected, and a discussion of any significant data to be interpreted should be presented.

We have no interest in pictures of personnel, plants or products. References to EBITDA make us shudder, does management think the tooth fairy pays for capital expenditures? We're very suspicious of accounting methodology that is vague or unclear, since too often that means management wishes to hide something. And we don't want to read messages that a public relations department or consultant has turned out. Instead, we expect a company's CEO to explain in his or her own words whats' happening.

For us, fair reporting means getting information to our 300,000 partners simultaneously, or as close to that mark as possible. We therefore put our annual and quarterly financials on the Internet between the close of the market on a Friday and the following morning. By our doing that, shareholders and other interested investors have timely access to these important releases and also have a reasonable amount of time to digest the information they include before the markets open on Monday ... READ MORE