常常少即是多 银行业瘦身应先瘦财报

 As all good golfers know, less is often more. Might the same be true when it comes to financial reporting? The page count inflation of company reporting over the past two decades has been staggering. Back in the mid-1990s the typical report and account was fewer than 100 pages; this spring’s annual report season saw most major companies publish weighty tomes, often more than 250 pages.

所有优秀的高尔夫球手都知道，常常少即是多。对财务报告而言，或许也是这样？过去20年里，公司财务报告的页数膨胀得惊人。回到1990年代，典型的公司财报都不到100页；而在今春的年报季，多数大公司都发布了大部头的财报，页数经常超过250页。

Putting aside the environmental damage from tree felling or the resulting back conditions afflicting¹ an army of postal² workers, has all this extra disclosure actually helped stakeholders better understand the businesses? Does more disclosure reflect a genuinely more complicated world, does it merely reveal the complexities³ that were always there, or is it simply the regulatory and accounting⁴ world gone mad?

所有这些额外披露除了造成更多的树木砍伐并破坏环境，以及给很多邮政工人带来背痛困扰以外，实际上有助于利益相关者更好地了解公司吗？更多的披露是反映出了一个真正变得更复杂的世界，还是只是反映了一直存在的复杂性，抑或仅仅表明监管和会计界失去了理智？

Perhaps the greatest champion of this “disclosure explosion” are banks. For example, 25 years ago Deutsche Bank’s annual report was under 100 pages (including two pages dedicated⁵ to their art collection). Of course banks today are big and complicated, and so one might expect their disclosure to also be big and complicated. Yet with Deutsche’s 2015 annual report running to more than 600 pages, it is right to ask whether such volume is helping⁶ or hindering stakeholders to understand what’s going on. And not only are there lots of words; any reader not familiar with AFS, CDR, CPR, CVA, DRE, DVA, EAD, FVA, IMM, LCR, LGD, MREL, NQH, NSFR, SFT, SNLP or TLAC (just to choose a few examples) will struggle to comprehend many of the issues.

或许，这一“披露爆炸”的最大冠军是银行。例如，25年前，德银(Deutsche Bank)的年报不到100页（其中两页专门介绍公司的艺术品收藏）。当然，如今的银行既庞大又复杂，所以，人们可能会预期它们的披露也要多而复杂。不过，德银2015年年报超过了600页，我们有理由问一问，这样的大部头到底是有助于还是阻碍利益相关者了解德银的现状？年报不但是字数多；而且，任何不熟悉可供出售资产(AFS)、中国存托凭证(CDR)、有条件提前还款率(CPR)、现金增加值(CVA)、存款利率弹性(DRE)、债务估值调整(DVA)、违约风险敞口(EAD)、融资价值调整(FVA)、内部模型法(IMM)、流动性覆盖率(LCR)、违约损失率(LGD)、合格债务最低要求(MREL)、净稳定资金比率(NSFR)、证券融资交易(SFT)、压力净流动性头寸(SNLP)或者总损失吸收能力(TLAC)（这里只举几个例子）的读者，将很难理解年报中的许多问题。

This matters. With the regulatory rules for banks in an endless state of flux⁷ and lurking⁸ fears of massive litigation, shareholders⁹ already have enough excuses to consider banks “uninvestable”. If attending a speed reading course and acquiring a degree in acronyms¹⁰ are also required to understand what they report, then many investors¹¹ may conclude that their time is better spent assessing companies in more comprehensible industries. That makes it harder and more expensive for banks to raise capital, which for Europe — with its heavy reliance on bank lending — is bad news.

这很重要。由于银行业监管规则没完没了的变化，以及对大规模诉讼的潜在担忧，股东们已有足够的理由认为银行“不值得投资”。如果想要读懂银行报告，还需要参加速读班并拿一个首字母缩略词方面的学位的话，那么许多投资者或许会认为，他们还不如花时间去评估那些更易理解的行业的公司。这会提高银行融资的难度和成本。对于严重依赖银行贷款的欧洲而言，这是个坏消息。

So what to do? The most obvious thing is to cut down disclosure. Regulators, accountants and banks should not be shy about binning¹² useless stuff. Prioritising what matters is equally important, as advocated by the Financial Stability Board’s enhanced disclosure task force and by the recent banking¹³ futures¹⁴ report.

那怎么办呢？最显而易见的是减少披露内容。监管者、会计师和银行不应羞于砍掉无用内容。优先披露重要事项同样重要，金融稳定委员会(FSB)的加强披露特别小组和最近的未来银行业报告就如此倡导。

More radical¹⁵, yet more relevant, disclosures would help, such as details of what topics were discussed and when by the board over the year or comparisons of the performance against budget.

更激进、但更切中要害的信息披露将对投资者有用，比如披露过去一年里，董事会于何时讨论了哪些议题的细节，或者业绩与预算的对照细节。

While insiders may protest that the complexity¹⁶ and opacity¹⁷ of the reporting simply mirrors the real world of banking, such thinking lacks imagination. With most banks’ stock market valuations below their book value, the industry needs to embrace, not resist, radical ideas that might help investors understand what they are being asked to invest in.

尽管内部人士或许会抗议称，报告的复杂与不透明仅仅反映了真实的银行世界，但这种想法缺乏想象力。现在多数银行的市值低于账面价值，因此银行业需要拥抱而不是抵制激进的想法，这些想法可能有助于投资者理解被邀请投资的对象。

When I started working in the City 25 years ago as an analyst¹⁸, before emails and before the internet, a key part of the job on the day a bank reported its results was calling its shareholders and telling them the actual numbers, since the sole electronic delivery mechanism¹⁹ was an expensive stock exchange news feed that only the investment banks could afford. Today, while all 600 pages of Deutsche Bank’s results are disclosed instantaneously to everyone, the volume, complexity and lazy reliance on jargon²⁰ and acronyms means that the analyst job has once again become one of simply communicating the numbers to the owners. As a result many are left asking the same question as their predecessors²¹ did a quarter of a century ago: “How much money did the bank actually make?”

当25年前我开始在伦敦金融城做分析师的时候，电子邮件和互联网尚未风行，每逢一家银行的业绩报告日，我的一项重要工作是给其股东打电话把具体的数字告诉他们，因为唯一的电子信息传送机制是只有投行能用得起的一种昂贵的股票交易所新闻推送。如今，尽管德银全部600页的财报是同时披露给所有人的，但报告的厚度、复杂性以及对术语和首字母缩略词的懒惰依赖意味着，分析师的工作再次变成把数字直接告诉给股东了。结果，许多投资者不得不问他们的前辈们在四分之一世纪之前问的问题：“这家银行到底赚了多少钱？”

1 afflicting   

痛苦的

参考例句：

• Violent crime is only one of the maladies afflicting modern society. 暴力犯罪仅仅是困扰现代社会的严重问题之一。
• Violent crime is only one of the maladies afflicting modern society. 暴力犯罪仅仅是危害社会的弊病之一。

2 postal   

adj.邮政的，邮局的

参考例句：

• A postal network now covers the whole country.邮路遍及全国。
• Remember to use postal code.勿忘使用邮政编码。

3 complexities   

复杂性(complexity的名词复数)； 复杂的事物

参考例句：

• The complexities of life bothered him. 生活的复杂使他困惑。
• The complexities of life bothered me. 生活的杂乱事儿使我心烦。

4 accounting   

n.会计，会计学，借贷对照表

参考例句：

• A job fell vacant in the accounting department.财会部出现了一个空缺。
• There's an accounting error in this entry.这笔账目里有差错。

5 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。

6 helping   

n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的

参考例句：

• The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
• By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。

7 flux   

n.流动；不断的改变

参考例句：

• The market is in a constant state of flux.市场行情在不断变化。
• In most reactors,there is a significant flux of fast neutrons.在大部分反应堆中都有一定强度的快中子流。

8 lurking   

潜在

参考例句：

• Why are you lurking around outside my house? 你在我房子外面鬼鬼祟祟的，想干什么？
• There is a suspicious man lurking in the shadows. 有一可疑的人躲在阴暗中。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

9 shareholders   

n.股东( shareholder的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The meeting was attended by 90% of shareholders. 90%的股东出席了会议。
• the company's fiduciary duty to its shareholders 公司对股东负有的受托责任

10 acronyms   

n.首字母缩略词( acronym的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Scratch the subject of defence and acronyms, abbreviations, and buzzwords fly out. 话题触及国防，缩合字，缩写字和行话就满天飞。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Some acronyms as scientific terminology are used as a lexical item. 一些科学术语缩写用作词汇项目。 来自互联网

11 investors   

n.投资者，出资者( investor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• a con man who bilked investors out of millions of dollars 诈取投资者几百万元的骗子
• a cash bonanza for investors 投资者的赚钱机会

12 binning   

n.装箱，进仓v.扔掉，丢弃( bin的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• Repair or donate broken items rather than binning them. 把损坏的物件拿去修理或捐赠出去，不要把它们存放在箱子里。 来自互联网
• But binning this sausage no longer looks feasible. 但若完全丢掉这根香肠可能性缺缺。 来自互联网

13 banking   

n.银行业，银行学，金融业

参考例句：

• John is launching his son on a career in banking.约翰打算让儿子在银行界谋一个新职位。
• He possesses an extensive knowledge of banking.他具有广博的银行业务知识。

14 futures   

n.期货，期货交易

参考例句：

• He continued his operations in cotton futures.他继续进行棉花期货交易。
• Cotton futures are selling at high prices.棉花期货交易的卖价是很高的。

15 radical   

n.激进份子，原子团，根号；adj.根本的，激进的，彻底的

参考例句：

• The patient got a radical cure in the hospital.病人在医院得到了根治。
• She is radical in her demands.她的要求十分偏激。

16 complexity   

n.复杂(性)，复杂的事物

参考例句：

• Only now did he understand the full complexity of the problem.直到现在他才明白这一问题的全部复杂性。
• The complexity of the road map puzzled me.错综复杂的公路图把我搞糊涂了。

17 opacity   

n.不透明；难懂

参考例句：

• He insisted that the mineral content of the water determined the opacity.他坚持认为水的清澈程度取决于其中矿物质的含量。
• Opacity of the eye lens can be induced by deficiency of certain vitamins.眼球晶状体的混浊可由缺乏某些维生素造成。

18 analyst   

n.分析家，化验员；心理分析学家

参考例句：

• What can you contribute to the position of a market analyst?你有什么技能可有助于市场分析员的职务？
• The analyst is required to interpolate values between standards.分析人员需要在这些标准中插入一些值。

19 mechanism   

n.机械装置；机构，结构

参考例句：

• The bones and muscles are parts of the mechanism of the body.骨骼和肌肉是人体的组成部件。
• The mechanism of the machine is very complicated.这台机器的结构是非常复杂的。

20 jargon   

n.术语，行话

参考例句：

• They will not hear critics with their horrible jargon.他们不愿意听到评论家们那些可怕的行话。
• It is important not to be overawed by the mathematical jargon.要紧的是不要被数学的术语所吓倒.

21 predecessors   

n.前任( predecessor的名词复数 )；前辈；（被取代的）原有事物；前身

参考例句：

• The new government set about dismantling their predecessors' legislation. 新政府正着手废除其前任所制定的法律。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Will new plan be any more acceptable than its predecessors? 新计划比原先的计划更能令人满意吗？ 来自《简明英汉词典》