I am very pleased to report that Eskom has won an award from the Investment Analysts Society (IAS) for its excellent financial reporting of last year.

This is very exciting for us as it is the first time a non-listed company, and particularly a state-owned company, has won one of the IAS’ coveted “squirrels”. The squirrel, a bronze statuette, is presented to companies for Ex­cellence in Financial Reporting and Communications. We won the award for our section, which is Basic Materi­als and Resources. Previous winners in this section include companies such as Anglo American, BHP Billiton and Arcelor Mittal.

The Investment Analysts Society has 1 800 members, who vote on the awards. The society has been in exist­ence for more than 40 years and provides a forum where professionals in the financial markets â€" investors, bond and equity market analysts, stockbrokers, traders and financial media â€" can meet with JSE-listed compa­nies and scrutinise the financial performance of these companies. The society hosts regular presentations to its members by listed companies, and voting for the awards is based on these as well as on companies’ annual reports and other financial communications.
Eskom is not a listed company, but as a state-owned entity we are ultimately owned by all South Africans - so the standards which we set ourselves for transparent and timely communication must be at least as high as those governing listed companies. Eskom has long been a leader in integrated reporting and we have signifi­cantly improved the quality and timeliness of our numbers and of our communications in the past couple of years.

The overall winner of this year’s IAS awards was Discovery Holdings.
The full list of section winners is:
Mining & Mining Houses: African Rainbow Minerals

• Basic Materials and Resources: Eskom Holdings SOC Limited
• Financial â€" Banks: FirstRand Limited
• Financial â€" Insurance: Discovery Holdings Limited
• Financial â€" Financial Service: Growthpoint Properties Limited
• Industrial â€" Basic Industry, Manufacturing and General: Hudaco Industries Limited
• Consumer Services : Mr Price Group Limited
• Consumer Products: Tongaat Hulett Limited
• Companies with market capitalisation below R5 billion: Group Five Limited
• Best Presentation to the Society (Companies with market capitalisation above R20 billion): African Bank In vestments Limited
• Best Presentation to the Society (Companies with market capitalisation between R5 â€" R20 billion) : Datatec Limited
• Best Presentation to the Society (companies with market capitalisation below R5 billion) : EOH Holdings Limited

Paul O'Flaherty 
Finance Director & Group Executive
Finance & Group Capital

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