European-listed companies are under pressure to disclose more financial information than ever before. The combined effect of Enron, WorldCom, Xerox and other financial scandals in the US has been to focus attention on the financial transparency - or the lack of it - of listed companies.

Those who believe that this is solely a US problem are badly mistaken. Nor does the need for better information apply just to companies that have allegedly misled investors in the past. Ask any international institutional investor and they will tell you that companies in, for example, France and the Netherlands often provide them with quite different financial information, prepared according to different accounting standards - and this despite being listed on the same stock exchange. Indeed, the lack of clear, uniform financial information has been frustrating investors in Europe and beyond for many years.

The European Union has been planning a response to these issues for some time as part of its wider move to creating a fully functioning integrated financial market. The Financial Services Action Plan (FSAP) of 1999 created a five-year target date by which the EU hopes to implement significant legislative and regulatory reform across member states. A number of those initiatives are now coming to a head and look set to radically change the way in which financial information is disseminated across Europe.

PR Newswire has been working to ensure that the dissemination expertise that it has built up over 50 years can be used to the benefit of stable markets and investors across Europe. Ensuring that news is sent securely, from a valid source, simultaneously to a wide audience of investors, on a non-selective basis, has been at the heart of PR Newswire's business since it was founded.

This book continues that trend. It can be used in a number of ways: it is a guide to practical disclosure for issuers across Europe; it is up-to-the-minute research on the differences between best practice and minimum disclosure in 17 European markets; and it also offers the latest thinking on the way forward from some of Europe's top disclosure experts.

Whatever your specific interest, it is brought to you by PR Newswire, which will also provide updates as changes occur. To sign up for access to news and information on the future of disclosure in Europe, and to learn more about what PR Newswire is regularly telling its customers, please visit www.prnewswire.co.uk/disclose.

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