Enough with the obsession with quarterly reports. A major American law firm – Wachtell, Lipton and Rosen & Katz – has asked the Fed to abolish the requirement for quarterly reports for companies. The problem is not new but American lawyers are back in office arguing, not wrongly, that quarterly reports force managers to focus on the short term by blurring the long-term vision and clouding the big strategic challenges to respond to pressure from activist funds that they often push for buybacks to boost stocks.
A problem of this kind has already been brought to the attention of the British Financial Markets Authority and at the beginning of the XNUMXs it also directly affected the Frankfurt Stock Exchange where BMW, arguing that its accounts were influenced by the seasonality of sales, repeatedly asked but in vain to be exempted from the obligation of quarterly reports.
Even in Italy, many have spoken out against shortermism as a function of more forward-looking management of businesses: one of the pioneers of this battle, which will sooner or later be resumed, is the founder of Tip, Gianni Tamburi.
