Financial Analysis Electronic communication has increased the availability and speed at which financial information is made public. Announcements and stock prices are made available in real time. Aggregated and historical information is widely available on information aggregator sites like Yahoo Finance. Annual reports are publicly available, and securities regulators insist that they be made publicly available.

The increased availability of financial information about companies serves to improve both the transparency and liquidity of financial markets. Investors of all types and abilities now have access to the information that they need to make information decisions. That all companies must produce consistent financial statements according to GAAP also helps with the transparency of financial information. With easy access to this information, investors can become more educated and more confident. Ultimately, this improves investor confidence in the system and liquidity in the market, improving the market's function.

Because publishing this material improves the function of capital markets, there is no financial material that should be omitted from the Internet. All investors should have access to the same information. I do, however, feel that privately-held companies should be under no obligation to publicly publish their financial records. This should only be for publicly held companies, because of the value that those statements have to the investing community. It should be up to that community to determine which pieces of information are relevant, so all information should be made available.

B. 1. The title of the report is the Reitmans Annual Report 2005. The report has a total of 30 pages, including the covers and title pages.

2. According to the annual report, Reitmans operates 867 stores in Canada. The company operates stores under a wide range of brand names, including the eponymous Reitmans stores, Smart Set, MXM, Addition Elle, RW & Co., Thyme and Penningtons.

3. The President of the company is Jeremy Reitman. The Vice-President is Eric Williams.

4. b, thousands of dollars

5. Sales in 2005 were $912,473,000. Earnings in 2005 were $66,907,000. Earnings per share were $1.94 basic and $1.90...

Pages 1-5 show how the company is achieving its objective of growing. A number statistics are used, for example the number of stores, the increases in earnings, revenue, shareholder's equity, return on equity and dividends. There has also been growth in EBITDA, EPS, cash and investments and pre-tax earnings as well. All of this growth is highlighted in this section.
7. The "management discussion and analysis" section of the annual report covers a number of achievements for the company in the past year. One of these achievements is that the company increased sales by 7.1%. The second is that the company "significantly improved gross margins." The third is that after-tax net earnings increased 67%.

8. The auditor of the financial statements was KPMG and the 2005 statements have been audited.

9. The company has both Class A non-voting shares and common shares. There are 28,054,128 of the Class A and 6,720,000 of the common outstanding. There were $7,573,000 in dividends paid out in 2004. The current market price of Reitmans is $16.95 according to Yahoo Finance Canada. The five-year chart from the same website is contained in Appendix A.

C. 1) The first report will be the 2005 Reitmans report. The second report will be the 2010 Annual Report for Alimentation Couche-Tard (English version).

The Reitmans "Highlights" section contains a brief corporate profile, although this should be considered incomplete as it is quite brief and lacking in detail. There is a discussion of results, which serves as a letter to shareholders. There is a report on financial performance included, providing some brief highlights. The financial section is a mandatory component of annual reports and is therefore included. Notes to financial statements are also included in the Reitmans report, as again they are mandatory. The Couch-Tard report includes a message to shareholders, several pages of management discussion & analysis, notes to financial statements, a fiscal 2010 overview that serves as a discussion of the financial condition of the…