Press Release - Close Cycle Rankings 2008
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JULY 11th 2008
BPM International Close Cycle Rankings 2008: UK stagnates, Europe accelerates steadily while the US rebuilds its lead and shrugs off the sub-prime crisis
• Paragon Consulting Group and its BPM International consulting partners compared 580 of the worlds largest companies
• UK Top 3 are Carnival, British Sky Broadcasting and Imperial Tobacco all reporting year end results in 30 days or less
• Average times to close for the UK FTSE100 have stagnated at 54 days, down 1 day in 5 years
• European Countries have continued to accelerate, biggest reductions in Switzerland, the Netherlands and France
• US average time to close has accelerated back to 29 days, matching pre Sarbanes-Oxley levels and re-establishing a significant lead over Europe
London, July 11th 2008. The most extensive global annual research into year end results announcements and audit timetables of the world’s largest companies has revealed that the UK has continued to stagnate, continental Europe continues to accelerate and the US has re-established its significant lead.
The UK Top 100 companies have continued to stagnate with no significant change in the overall picture either for the preliminary announcement or audit sign-off metric in the last five years.
David Jones, Director of Paragon Consulting Group, who conducted the research, comments “The UK stagnation is disappointing, but it is encouraging that there has been significant acceleration by some companies in the UK, for example Tullow Oil, Vedanta Resources, Intercontinental Hotels Group, Imperial Tobacco, British Energy Group, Shire Pharmaceuticals, British Sky Broadcasting and Lloyds TSB, all of whom have shaved at least 14 days off their time to close and announce year end results over the last five years. Sadly, there are still many companies who have just not caught on to how powerful the Close Cycle metric can be for driving finance improvement programs”.
In continental Europe, the most significant reductions in time to close over the last five years have been in Switzerland (average reduced by 20%), the Netherlands (14%) and France (7%). This includes dramatic reductions at companies such as LVMH, Allianz, BASF, Swiss Re, Munich RE, Philips Electronics and EDF who have all accelerated their announcement timetable by at least 20 days.
“In the past, it’s the USA that people have looked to for leadership on the fast close, but perhaps leadership is shifting west to Europe. For example, Novartis International AG now looks like the world champion”, commented Jones. “They announce audited financial results; publish their year end report and accounts and SEC returns all within 17 days of their year end”.
This contrasts with the US leader, Cisco, who announce their result after 10 days but do not have an audit signature on their SEC filing for another 38 days. The best equivalent UK performance is by British Sky Broadcasting, who report audited results 27 days after their year end.
The close cycle time is regarded by many Finance Directors as a key benchmark. This is because there is wide evidence and acceptance in the finance community that the speed of close is symptomatic of the state of the underlying finance processes and systems in the organization. Those who have the fastest external reporting close cycles will typically have some of the most effective and efficient finance processes and systems and as a consequence they will also have some of the faster internal management reporting close cycles.
Close Cycle Rankings 2008
The close cycle rankings 2008 includes numerous rankings for UK, European, US and world-wide major companies, including the four-year trends, regional trends, global industry trends, each with the elapsed days of the result announcement dates and the audit sign-off dates. The rankings are based on published and publicly available information. The date used to measure the elapsed days between financial year end and announcement date is the date of publication of “preliminary results” in the UK or its equivalent in European and US markets. The audit date is taken from the appropriate company filing or published financial statements.
For a copy of the full report and/or specific results for a country or industry contact:
Sue Shaw (Paragon Consulting Group) +44 207 580 8938, sue.shaw@paragonbpm.com.
About Paragon Consulting Group
Paragon is a leading provider of full life cycle services for Business Performance Management (BPM). Paragon’s services range from defining a Performance Management Roadmap through to project management, implementation and application management services. The depth and focus of Paragon’s BPM application skills are unparalleled and are supplemented with finance, information technology, business and process skills. http://www.paragonbpm.com/
About BPM International
BPM International is Europe’s only integrated Business Performance Management (BPM) consulting network. BPM is an umbrella term that describes all of the processes, methodologies, metrics and systems needed to measure and manage an organization’s performance. The BPM International members are five leading BPM consultancies with operations in 20 countries and over 300 BPM focussed consultants, working with many diverse companies across multiple industries including some of Europe’s largest multinational corporations. The members of BPM International are: Paragon Consulting Group (UK, Middle East), Centre Consulting (Netherlands), Capto Financial Consulting (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland), ifb group (Germany, USA, China, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Slovakia, France, Poland, Uruguay) and ValorGest (Portugal).
Contacts:
David H. Jones
Chairman of BPM International
Director of Services, Paragon Consulting Group Ltd.
London
Tel +44 (0) 207 580 8938
Mobile +44 (0) 7711 063722
david.jones@paragonbpm.com
www.bpm-international.com
Sue Shaw
Marketing Manager, Paragon Consulting Group Ltd.
London
Tel +44 (0) 207 580 8938
Mobile +44 (0) 7717 321683
sue.shaw@paragonbpm.com
www.paragonbpm.com