The CFOs of companies awarded for their excellence in financial reporting explain their approaches.
Each year, the Analysts Society of South Africa (IAS) honours companies that demonstrate excellence in transparency, financial disclosure and communication with the investment community and its members.
Raisibe Morathi, group CFO at Nedbank – which walked away as the overall winner of the IAS Excellence in Financial Reporting and Communications Awards 2018 – said:
“To regain investor trust the finance community needs to be more open and transparent in their disclosures and embrace balanced reporting. To achieve this, we have to ensure that our organisations have appropriate oversight and world-class governance practices in place and that our finance teams are skilled and supported by effective systems that facilitate clear and insightful internal reporting to ensure one version of the truth with external reporting.”
Afrimat won the ‘Best Presentation to the Society in 2018 – companies with market capitalisation below R5 billion’ award. Pieter de Wit (pictured), CFO, said that the company strives to be world-class leaders in everything it does and when it receives awards like this “it just echoes on the company’s strategy and supports its humbling belief in striving to be world class leaders in all aspects of life.”
“I realise the scale of this award and this makes me even more proud to be a part of the Afrimat team,” Pieter said.
Discovery won the ‘Best Presentation to the Society in 2018 – companies with market capitalisation above R30 billion’ award. Group FD Deon Viljoen said that Discovery’s vision is to ensure outstanding two-way communication with the analyst community, in terms of conveying strategy, and not just performance; and insight, not just information.
“The award acknowledges that we are successfully conveying not just what we are doing, but how and why as well,” Deon said.
Growthpoint Properties won the ‘Best Reporting and Communication Award – Property Sector’ award. Growthpoint CFO of South Africa Francois Schindehütte accepted the award expressing their appreciation for the company’s ninth consecutive win. He said that the company will continue to strive for excellence in transparency and financial reporting.
