Question: Investors, individual, corporate and institutional, are increasingly investing beyond national borders. The reason is not hard to find. Returns abroad, even after allowing for foreign
Investors, individual, corporate and institutional, are increasingly investing beyond national borders. The reason is not hard to find. Returns abroad, even after allowing for foreign currency exchange risk, have often exceeded those offered by domestic investments. Information provided in a firm’s annual report is often the major source of information available to those seeking to sample foreign equities. In attempting to assess the risk and return attributes of a given company, readers must answer questions such as the following: What accounting principles were employed? Should the
financial statements be restated according to a different set of accounting principles to be more useful? What types of information are not provided that one would expect to find in
financial statements of companies from the investor’s home country? How would one compensate for limited disclosure? What does the
audit report reveal about the level of audit quality? What auditing standards were used? Are they acceptable? Does the
audit report mean the same thing as it does in the reader’s home country? Appendix 1-2 (refers you to) the
financial statements (including selected notes) and auditor’s report for Infosys Technologies Limited. Infosys was incorporated in 1981 as Infosys Consultants Private Limited, as a private company under the Indian Companies Act. Its name eventually evolved into Infosys Technologies Limited in 1992, when the company went public. Its mission is to provide high quality and cost competitive technology solutions for companies around the world. It has grown into a $5 billion company with a market capitalization in excess of $15 billion. In examining the information (referred to) in Appendix 1-2, comment on how the statements of Infosys stack up to other companies in the industry in meeting the information needs of a nondomestic investor such as yourself. Specifically, what reporting practices raise issues for you? What reporting practices do you find particularly helpful? In preparing your critique, compare the reporting practices of Infosys to a service provider in your country, most of whom maintain corporate Web sites on the Internet.