Postmodern Annual Reports : Arguments against Adverts Placement in Annual Reports

Globalization and the consequent transformations in the business world have reflected on every page of the postmodern annual report. This is evident in the diversified use of annual report for various purposes by reporting entities. One of these trends is the placement of advertisements in the annual report, a practice that may have come to stay since the last few decades. In Nigeria, this practice is common especially among firms listed on the stock market. However, nothing has been empirically or theoretically to present any justifiable reason (legal or business-wise) for this fast-growing practice in the business and financial reporting world. This paper therefore argues that the dedication of certain pages in the annual report to advertisements is not typical of the accounting and financial reporting profession and hence should be regarded as an unethical practice. Using a sample of 10 listed deposit money banks (DMBs) in Nigeria and after reviewing 100 annual reports of these banks for 10 years from 2011 to 2020, observations revealed a number of potential problems associated with the placement of adverts in annual reports. It is therefore recommended that managers should desist from misusing the annual reports for adverts placement, while regulators should consider the need for strict regulations of annual report contents.