Value Added Reporting: Lessons for the United States

A new form of accounting statement--the value added statement--is gaining popularity in the corporate annual reports of the largest companies in the United Kingdom. This new statement can be viewed as a modified version of the income statement. Like the income statement, the value added statement reports the operating performance of a company at a given point in time, using both accrual and matching procedures. Unlike the income statement, however, it is interpreted not as a return to shareholders but as a return to the larger group of capital and labor providers. Riahi-Belkaoui shows that the value added statement can be easily derived from the income statement and is therefore easily adaptable to the needs of U.S. companies. To illustrate the usefulness of the value added statement, Riahi-Belkaoui devotes Chapter 1 to a thorough discussion of its many benefits. He then analyzes the usefulness of the value added concept in understanding the characteristics of corporate takeovers in the United States, and in Chapter 3 he discusses the relationship between the value added concept and the systematic risk of U.S. companies, concluding in Chapter 4 with a discussion of value added statements in financial analysis. His book will thus interest not only accountants, teachers, and students who follow trends in international and multi-national accounting but also those who want to prepare themselves for the development of value added techniques and procedures that might reasonably be expected in the United States.