2022 Swiss Annual Report Rating

We helped Sika to first place and Holcim to second place in the 2022 overall ratings. We work for four of the top twelve companies. In the overall online and print design rating we were involved in twelve of the top 30 solutions. Our customers Phoenix Mecano and Jungfraubahn Holding are the two biggest climbers of the year in the Design rating. Our business partners Phoenix Mecano, Valiant and Sika have taken the top three places in the text category.

The 2022 Swiss Annual Report Rating involved assessing the annual reports (for the 2021 financial year) of all companies that were on the Swiss Performance Index (SPI) at the end of 2021, plus the 50 companies in Switzerland with the highest sales, the 25 banks with the highest balance sheet total, and the 15 insurance companies with the highest technical income according to FINMA, not all of which are stock-exchange listed. The 2022 Annual Report Rating covered a total of 236 organisations.

This sample was evaluated by three panels. The first was the Value Reporting panel headed by Professor Alexander F. Wagner at the University of Zurich Department of Banking and Finance. The list of value reporting criteria comprises ten blocks of individual sub-criteria; in its turn, each of these sub-criteria is based on individual questions. The resulting evaluations were then aggregated to draw up a final ranking list.

Secondly the Design panel, under the patronage of the Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK) and headed by Jiří Chmelik at Noir Associates, assessed the design of the reports. The panel of experts rated the online version and the print edition; if no print edition was available, the PDF posted on the internet was rated. The output from the overall ranking of the Value Reporting and Design panels took the form of a list of the twelve best-ranked annual reports. On this basis the finalists panel, which in addition to representatives of the Value Reporting and Design panels included additional experts working in practice, decided on the three overall winners.

In addition, a further panel rated the quality of the text in the twelve top-ranked annual reports and the biggest climbers in the Design an Value Reporting category. The Text panel was headed by Professor Aleksandra Gnach and Professor Wibke Weber at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW).

All the results of the Swiss Annual Report Rating can be accessed online. The website, designed and produced by Linkgroup, features rankings of all the annual reports rated in the Value Reporting and Design categories. By way of added value, all the rated reports can be downloaded as a PDF, and there are links to the respective online versions.

Specialists in financial publishing

Our Financial Publishing service package is aimed at listed and non-listed companies that see the value of professional financial and sustainability communications. It is targeted at investors, financial analysts and the media. Our clients benefit from our cross-media capabilities and deep vertical integration, all on a one-stop basis. We can provide you with advice and support on cross-media communications strategies and developing content. We also make sure that content is orchestrated properly across channels. In addition we can provide you with web-based publishing systems to make the process effective and efficient. Our clientele includes many well-known organisations.

Linkgroup: Platinum Partner to the HarbourClub Symposium 2022

www.harbourclub.ch

The symposium will take place at the Siemens Campus in Zug on 17 November 2022 under the banner “Let’s dance”. The speakers: IMD professor Dr David Bach, Siemens Switzerland CEO Gerd Scheller and Gen Z expert Steffi Burkhart. As usual, case studies featuring relevant organisations will be presented in the breakout sessions, and a special surprise guest promises an exciting conclusion to the event. Programme and registration: www.harbourclub.ch

“This was the first time we had developed and published our annual reporting including both an annual and a sustainability report. Linkgroup gave us perfect, comprehensive support. Their rich experience and our knowledge were a great match, and we were able to make clear progress in terms of value reporting. We were particularly impressed by Linkgroup’s proposal for a cross-media strategy encompassing significantly improved publication on the corporate website, an online annual report and quick report, a CEO video, social media and a rethink of our report as a magazine. The fact that Linkgroup offers in-house services spanning everything from the concept, content creation and design to implementation made things more efficient for Sika.”

Dominik Slappnig
Head Corporate Communications & Investor Relations at Sika AG, Baar ZG

“The collaboration with Linkgroup was very professional, constructive and highly responsive, even throughout intense times. The project management and the respective roles and responsibilities worked seamlessly, which is key for such a project in a global environment. Our top management wanted, in addition to print, to communicate our key reporting messages to our stakeholders in a more dynamic and multi-media way. Feedback from management has been uniformly positive, with the Board calling the new financial and sustainability reporting a ‘quantum leap’ forward. We are very grateful to Linkgroup for helping us to bring it to life.”

Jonathan Tin
Head of Corporate Reporting Holcim Ltd, Zug

“We’ve been working with Linkgroup since our IPO in 1999. They give us active advice at all stages of the process, and the way they implement is structured and efficient. We like their practical approach to communications design and the fact that they avoid art for art’s sake: they work within the framework of our corporate design to develop solutions for our stakeholders that have an impact and a concrete benefit. Another of Linkgroup’s strengths as a one-stop shop that particularly benefits Geberit is their extraordinarily deep vertical integration and process security.”

Christoph Abt
Global Editor Corporate Communications Geberit International AG, Rapperswil-Jona (Canton of St Gallen)

“A new, fresh website for the Phoenix Mecano Group should better represent the company and more clearly show its strategy. We also wanted to rethink our reporting concept and seamlessly integrate our first sustainability report. The new group website now serves as a central communications hub integrating reporting and sustainability. Linkgroup thinks in terms of content and has provided us with professional support from strategy to conception and design to cross-media implementation. We’ve derived enormous benefit from their one-stop shop approach, experienced project management team and high degree of vertical integration. Thanks to a modern approach and design that matches our philosophy and self-image, we’ve been able to efficiently gear our group communications to all the relevant stakeholders – achieving the goal of the project.”

Philipp Eberhard
Head of Corporate Communications Phoenix Mecano Management AG, Kloten (Canton of Zurich)

“Communications media for financial and sustainability reporting are particularly demanding. Linkgroup has deep expertise in this field, a proven track record and a great deal of cross-media know-how. Together we’re constantly evolving our communications media. Great examples of this are the special investor relations site embedded in our corporate website and the development of the group’s branding. Ever since our IPO in 2016, collaboration with Linkgroup has been perfect in all respects, especially during hectic phases where changes have had to be made at short notice. One-stop services from concept and creation to cross-media production, plus the PublishingSuite Finance® platform, have also helped make things very efficient.”

Michel Gerber
Head of Investor Relations & Corporate Communications of VAT Group AG, Haag (Canton of St Gallen)