FTSE-100 Survey - Wooden spoon revoked

Well, with 4,000 bits of data and a few thousand more calculations to perform, it was inevitable, we suppose, that at least one gremlin would slip into our database for last month’s survey of FTSE-100 annual reports.

David Tyler, finance director at Great Universal Stores, drew our attention to a keystroke error which resulted in us tapping in GUS’s audit sign-off date as 25/07 rather than 25/06. Hence, his company’s accounts were not signed off in a snail’s pace 116 days, as we had reported, but at a somewhat more normal 86 days. “Certainly not a record-breaker”, Mr Tyler admits, but neither is it deserving of the wooden spoon, which we ought to have given to RMC Group, for its 115 day audit. Our apologies to Mr Tyler and to GUS auditors Coopers & Lybrand.