DOI: 10.17635/lancaster/researchdata/271
title: Annual Reports Key Sections Corpora 2003 to 2017

description: UK Annual Reports Key Sections Plain text content extracted from an
      initial sample of 31,464 annual reports published between January 2002 and
      December 2017 by firms listed on the London Stock Exchange (LSE). Annual
      reports provided as PDF files are processed using the CFIE-FRSE tool
      downloadable from https://github.com/drelhaj/CFIE-FRSE and described in
      the companion paper available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2803275. The
      tool processed 26,284 reports from the initial sample (83.5%). The final
      sample includes reports published by financial and non-financial firms
      listed on either the LSE Main Market or the Alternative Investment Market
      (AIM). The document table of contents (TOC) forms the basis of extraction
      for 15,883 reports (approximately 60%); pre-existing document bookmarks
      are used to process the remaining 10,401 reports. The CFIE-FRSE tool
      partitions annual reports into the “front-end” narratives component and
      the “back-end” financials component (including the auditor’s report,
      mandatory financial statements and associated footnotes, and miscellaneous
      disclosures). We further partition the narratives component into a set of
      commonly occurring annual report sections that feature prominently in
      prior research. These narrative subsections (together with the auditor’s
      report) are numbered 1-12 and described in more detail in the following
      table. Text extracts are provided by report calendar year in separate
      files of one-million words for each core section 1-12. All extracted
      content is provided for the pooled set of reports processed using TOC (N =
      15,883) to ensure classification consistency across reports.
      [HeaderType]----[Annual report corpora]----[ Number of reports ]----[
      Number of firms ]----[ Number of words] [1]----[Letter from board
      chair]----[ 14,032 ]----[ 2,752 ]----[ 15,389,643 ] [2]----[CEO
      review]----[ 7,160 ]----[ 1,640 ]----[ 13,947,211 ] [3]----[Governance
      statement]----[ 12,766 ]----[ 2,500 ]----[ 43,695,127 ]
      [4]----[Remuneration report]----[ 12,725 ]----[ 2,269 ]----[ 39,668,122 ]
      [5]----[Business review]----[ 2,689 ]----[ 795 ]----[ 8,674,686 ]
      [6]----[Financial review]----[ 8,460 ]----[ 1,686 ]----[ 20,013,680 ]
      [7]----[Operating review]----[ 2,819 ]----[ 794 ]----[ 7,008,451 ]
      [8]----[Highlights]----[ 11,099 ]----[ 2,082 ]----[ 3,750,407 ]
      [9]----[Auditors report]----[ 15,038 ]----[ 2,884 ]----[ 19,036,357 ]
      [10]----[Risk management]----[ 4,715 ]----[ 1,090 ]----[ 11,781,738 ]
      [11]----[Chairman’s governance introduction]----[ 1,137 ]----[ 430 ] ----[
      1,338,304 ] [12]----[CSR disclosures]----[ 6,630 ]----[ 1,148 ]----[
      12,948,932 ] [2+5+6+7]----[Management commentary]----[ 11,507 ]----[ 2,261
      ]----[ 49,644,028 ] [3+11] ----[Governance commentary]----[ 12,844]----[
      2,513]----[ 45,033,431 ] Entire Narratives component (excluding audit
      report) [ 15,883 ]----[ 2,925 ]----[ 178,216,301 ] Entire Narratives
      component (including audit report) [ 15,883 ]----[ 2,936 ]----[
      197,252,658 ]