Part Three: Bad Management speeches – Mercy for the Trees!

As a person with a few investments, I too, receive the bulky envelopes of mutual fund reports, annual reports, and proxy voting materials. I feel a twinge of guilt when I think of the mailman’s likely cursing of all the investors on the street. I imagine I am not alone in the feeling of alarm at the waste of paper we shareholders are somehow accountable for.Eventually, I do open all the envelopes, have a cursory glance at the design and paper choice, snicker at the similarity of the forthright sounding messages of progress on the cover, and then dutifully stack them, usually in the bathroom, for reading at some point in the future. Of course this is the same state of denial I go through with leftover food, it slowly migrates backwards in the fridge till it clearly needs to be tossed; annual reports, despite the ultimate sacrifice of the trees have made, also will end up in the bin, cursorily paged through at best.

Let’s face it; these things were a lot more popular before the Internet spoiled their monopoly as a source of information. Companies are trying to transition shareholders into online communications (if only it could communicate with them with any surety). But the move is on. The next generation of investors doesn’t read newspapers, probably isn’t particularly attracted to things like print annuals, and certainly expects the information to be online.So, as the older folks with money (but no computers) are replaced by younger folks with money (their parent’s?) and computers, the final nails will be driven into the print annual’s coffin.As the printing and mailing costs are reduced it is rather straightforward to divert those resources to the publication of a true web version of the report in HTML. Companies should embrace the switch and strive to meet the audience expectations, not with expensive paper stock, but with fine HTML and usability.