국제회계기준을 채택하고 있는 독일기업의 연차보고서 사례분석: 가치보고를 중심으로

The objective of this paper is to study how to improve the quality of annual reports by the case study on German companies. For this, the value reporting model was introduced. And then the disclosure clause in Germany and the actual annual report of German companies were examined. Specifically, best practice of Adidas Group and the other excellent disclosure companies in Germany for the fiscal year 2007 was examined. Finally, the recommendable points on Korean companies were discussed. The annual report is positioned as a general tool of communication in a relation of global enterprises to the investors of different regions, as accounting standards are globally unified under IFRS and the financial informations have more international relevance to each other. However, Korean companies haven't recognized this trend and their annual report is usually served as a tool of public relations for the companies or their products, so the annual report of German companies that is friendly to the investors was examined. The integral parts of the annual report of German companies are a management report, financial statements and notes. Specifically, the most parts of a management report are based on the management's analysis which is useful to the decision of investors. As the investors are generally interested in the sustainability of companies, the value reporting is to be a main theme of a management report. The disclosure of a management report(Lagebericht) in Germany is subject to the commercial law(Handelsgesetzbuch HGB). In addition, German companies have voluntarily presented more their business informations including the value reporting. Korean companies have also submitted the business report as mandatory disclosure, but they don't use it again in the annual report for the favour of investors. Although the financial informations in the business report are mostly useful to the investors, it is often hard to understand them because of their formal presentation. So it is necessary to explain them from the view of management. In order to comply with the demand of general investors to present the financial informations in the verbal form, the voluntary disclosure of management is also recommendable. In this respect, the management has decisively to change the strategy of financial reporting according to the actual requests of investors. Parallel to this, the practical instructions for the presenting of management reports are continuously to be suggested. For that, the authorities concerned, academy and practitioners must work together.