There is a clear role for professional bodies and regulatory authorities to set minimum requirements attached to publicly disclosed information in order to help ensure its integrity, and to make it ultimately useful for stakeholders. These include auditors, accounting standards boards, stock market exchanges, financial market conduct authorities and prudential authorities.
There are a number of local and international examples that illustrate the importance of public disclosure – or more to the point, the failings of poor disclosure: In the United States a number of financial and accounting scandals in the early 2000s associated with Enron and WorldCom, prompted a major overhaul of regulation which included a focus on increased financial disclosure.