The Radley Yeldar award for:

Best Overall Strategic Value Added by a FTSE100 Company

Oliver Dudok van Heel, Radley Yeldar, and Mark Noble, National GridAviva
InterContinental Hotels Group
Land Securities Group
National Grid

This award acknowledges the FTSE100 Company that adds the most strategic value in its corporate reporting. Words are to narrative and the future performance of a company what numbers are to accounting and past performance.

Annual Accounts are able to use accounting conventions to provide a record of historical achievement each year. In order to demonstrate and compare future potential, Annual Reports need a framework based on best practice guidelines underpinned by statutory requirements.

Through effective narrative companies can demonstrate strategic leadership and add strategic value. It requires clear articulation of strategic thinking, effective evidence of strategic management and expansive illustration of underlying strategic capability.

The four companies short-listed for this award were the highest scoring in FutureValue’s Strategic Value Ranking over the 2009/10 reporting cycle. Indeed, three of these four companies are consistently, year-on-year, among the best in adding strategic value in their Annual Reports.

But in this reporting cycle one stands out. National Grid surpasses its own invariably high standard with a 2010 narrative that is exemplary in a number of ways. It conveys the clarity and rigour of its strategic thinking in its unique presentation of Group vision, strategy and operating objectives, linked directly through a set of business drivers to the Group’s strategic risks and key performance indicators; the business drivers providing the link to how the risks are mitigated.

National Grid also shows how sustainability in every sense is fundamental to the Group, and is integral to its strategy. Perhaps the Group’s greatest achievement here is to prepare a dual-listed Annual Report that meets UK and US reporting requirements without compromising its very high standard – a feat that has defeated many other FTSE100 companies

About Radley Yeldar

Radley Yeldar is a creative communications business, helping you tell your story simply, in one clear voice, by whatever means works best. We have deep experience in corporate reporting spanning over 25 years.  our people bring together expertise in reporting and sustainability, communicated in print, online and film. Every year we conduct a rigorous appraisal of FTSE100 companies’ annual reports and sustainability reports. Published under the title “How does it stack up?” this research has become a benchmark for trends and good practice in reporting.