AWARD

AWARD for Best Financial Information

In 2010 we organised for the 50th year the Award for the Best Financial Information as well as the nominations for Best Annual Report, Best Press Releases, Best Website and Best Investor Relations. This year we continue this path and have worked even more in close relation with the BIRA, the Belgian Investor Relation Association and the financial intermediaries in our country.

Since this 50th anniversary we have enlarged and upgraded our event thanks to many sponsors who were willing to help us marketing this event. From this year onwards we have invited several people from the international community of financial analysts and intend to do so even more in the coming years. Analysts covering our main industries do not operate from Brussels alone anymore. An increasing number of those analysts is operating from London, Paris or Amsterdam. A lot of Belgian quoted companies are no longer quoted in Brussels alone either. Financial analysis has become truly international.

We have also automated this Award and created a platform that will make life easier for the participating analysts and will provide us with the possibility to quicker analyse, perform cross company and sector analysis and keep track of year to year improvements.

Over the past few months, close to 100 financial analysts are analyzing how the Belgian listed companies communicate with the financial markets and how they make financial information available to the investors' community. It has to be stressed that this Award still gets tremendous support from the vast majority of the Belgian analysts and other financial specialists on the one hand side, and from the stock quoted companies on the other hand. Their help is a key feature of the Award and the Belgian Association of Financial Analysts would sincerely like to thank all that have participated in the process during the last years. Those analysts screen and rank more than 55 companies. We impose that every participating company is being analyzed by at least 3 analysts.

Good financial communication remains a necessity, despite the difficult times the markets have been going through. And luckily companies did not scale back their efforts in terms of financial communication or investor relations. On the contrary, we are particularly pleased with the progress that a number of small- and midcaps keep making. For these smaller companies in particular, financial communication remains a necessity in order to attract the attention of national and international, small and larger investors."

This is a very positive evolution, knowing that we are barely leaving the recession behind us. Today, more than ever, correct financial information has, without any doubt, a crucial impact. Our governments try to overcome the crisis through extensive regulation and state control but this raises significant questions regarding the current financial system and its information provision. Further solutions must be elaborated on a European or world scale level. Globalisation is omnipresent. Different recommendations from the European Federation of Financial Analyst Societies (EFFAS), our parent association, were taken into account to enhance and optimize a quicker and more adequate information distribution. This European presence has proved to be a must in order to make information more transparent.

Initiatives, such as this Award, improve consistently the quality of the financial and non financial communication and make the markets more efficient. The Belgian Association of Financial Analysts continues to strive for better, more transparent and quicker financial communication. We will also put more effort in non financial communication, sustainability reporting, etc. We acknowledge that there is no such thing as "the investor". We must adapt the information flow to the different needs and expectations of a diversified public.

Thank you.