Long Form Audit Report

Implications to Zimbabwe’s Securities Market

The aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis has seen full disclosure of material information increasingly becoming inevitable to investment decision making.

Hence, the introduction of the Long Form Audit report by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board complements ongoing global initiatives for improved information disclosure.

Remember, the Long Form Audit report is aimed at aiding the communicative value and relevancy of audit reporting.

Securities and Exchange Commission of Zimbabwe (SECZ) aims at extending protection to all investors by aligning local capital markets operations and regulation with international standards. The Long Form Audit report compliments

SECZ efforts which require listed companies to make timely, equitable and comprehensive disclosures of material information to investors. Following the introduction of the Long Form audit report, the Commission requires all listed companies to publish their abridged audited press releases with at least the following: ◆ Audit opinion as reassurance of a true and fair view of the financial statements from an independent professional third party, ◆ Name of the Auditor to enable investors to clearly identify the respective accountable Auditor of companies invested in, ◆ Key Audit Matters, being the auditor’s highlights of relatively more important areas during an audit process and ◆ State that the full audit report and the complete set of financial statements are available for inspection at the company’s registered office. In order to aid the market’s disclosure makeup, listed companies are also required to capture any other value adding issues contained in the audit report for timely investors’ consumption. Investors are therefore encourage to take full advantage of the improved information disclosure in their decision making process.

The complete audit report and the abridged audited press release will be available in two newspapers, the respective company’s website as well as the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange website.

This new requirement applies to all listed companies and is effective for audit periods ending on or after December 31, 2016.