HSBC Holdings plc won the HKMA Best Report Award this year. Its report was commended by the 9-member Panel of Adjudicators as a high quality report with comprehensive coverage and professional presentation, and overall excellence in all aspects comparable to the highest international standard.

The trophies were presented on Monday, 16 December by Dr The Hon David K P Li GBS JP, Chairman of The Hong Kong Management Association.

Apart from the Best Report Award, there are two categories of winning reports: General and Non-profit Making and Charitable Organizations. The results are as follows:

�General� Category

Gold: MTR Corporation Limited

Silver: CLP Holdings Limited

Hang Seng Bank Limited

Bronze: China Mobile (Hong Kong) Limited

Next Media Limited

CNOOC Limited

�Non-profit Making and Charitable Organizations� Category

Gold: Securities and Futures Commission

Silver: Hong Kong Monetary Authority

Bronze: City University of Hong Kong

Honourable Mentions

Airport Authority Hong Kong

Companies Registry

The Family Planning Association of Hong Kong

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited

The Hong Kong Jockey Club

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Hong Kong Trade Development Council

Kerry Properties Limited

Kowloon-Canton Railway Corporation

The Land Registry Trading Fund Hong Kong

Pricerite Group Limited

Wah Sang Gas Holdings Limited

A total of 132 reports (86 from General and 34 from Non-profit Making and Charitable Organizations categories) were reviewed by the Panel of Adjudicators, including reports of all the constituents of the Hang Seng Index. The Best Report was selected from the 86 submitted voluntarily from the General category.

An exhibition organized the Association will be held to publicly display all the 132 annual reports. Details are as follows:

Date: 17-18 December 2002

Time: 11:00 am � 8-00 pm

Venue: Hong Kong MTR Station

Organized by The Hong Kong Management Association since 1973, the Best Annual Reports Awards is an annual event to encourage the publication of accurate, informative, well presented and timely annual reports for shareholders, employees and others who may have an interest in the performance and activities of the organization in question.

The criteria of selection include: conformity with accounting standards, conformity with the requirements of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Companies� Ordinance, general presentation, management discussion and analysis, understandability, summary of past results and highlights, indications of prospects, employee relations and development, as well as promptness of reporting.

For the General Category, the Adjudicators commended that �The overall standard of annual reports this year remained high, and it was gratifying to see noticeable improvements particularly in the reports of the small and medium companies in this category. It is also encouraging to see new entries with outstanding performances, and some even came up in the list of Awards.

Despite the standards of reporting, the panel did identify two areas for improvement. Firstly, �The Panel of Adjudicators would like to stress again the importance of complying with such (accounting) standards to produce an informative and reliable annual report.� In addition, �More emphasis should be given to employee related issues to make the annual reports more comprehensive and detailed on one hand and show commitment to staff welfare and benefit on the other.�

The Panel of adjudicators further suggested that �In future reports, we hope to see improvements in how companies deal with Corporate Governance issues such as Audit and Remuneration Committees, board structure, internal audit policies, code of practices and share holder relations etc.� Moreover, �Environmental - friendly policies and operations of companies in general, their technology management techniques, resource efficiency and waste reduction measures are now of considerable interest to readers and should be noted in future annual reports.�

For Non-profit Making and Charitable Organizations Category, the Adjudicators were satisfied with the continuous improvement in the generally high standard of performance among entries. They commented that �Reports from these organizations continued to be strong in reporting their purposes and past activities, and in producing comprehensive and detailed information about the organizations in an engaging and easy to follow manner with the effective use of photos, charts and other visuals.�

�The major weakness of most entries continued to be promptness of reporting and discussion on future plans.� �In next year�s reports it will be most interesting to see how well these organizations coped with the challenges (tightening resources and increasing public attention and expectations) and whether they captured new opportunities to achieve their organizational mission and objectives.� added the Panel of Adjudicators.

The Panel of Adjudicators this year include Mr Howard Gorges (Chairman), Vice Chairman, South China Brokerage Co Ltd; Mr Robert Bunker, Director, Bentley Reid & Co (Pacific) Ltd; Ms Jill Cheshire, Director, Jill Cheshire Design; Mr Colin Chau, Director, Professional Compliance Department, Hong Kong Society of Accountants; Mr Charles R Grieve, Director of Accounting Policy, Corporate Finance Division, Securities & Futures Commission; Mr Caspar Li, President,

High Fashion Garments Management Limited; Ms Karen Lee, Executive Vice President, Listing, Regulation & Risk Management, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited; Mr Maurice Ngai, President, Top Orient (HK) Limited; and Mr James Soutar, Managing Director, Phoenix Research Ltd.

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Issued by The Hong Kong Management Association on 16 December 2002.

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Email: titaniawoo@hkma.org.hk) or Ms Sunnie Ma (Tel: 2774 8581/

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