Year end: Jun 2017
Assessment date: Feb 2018

Supergroup achieved an impressive business turnaround, partly based on excellent management of financial indicators. However, the company appears focused on efficiency of operations, rather than responding to stakeholder challenges. The company seems largely unaware of the value of responsible behaviour, choosing rather to use its annual reporting suite as an opportunity to signal its virtue as a corporate citizen with a list sustainability initiatives. Even financial and operational reviews contain excessive marketing-related achievements.

There is little evidence of integrating long-term value drivers with financial performance reporting, with ESG initiatives largely relegated to a separate sustainability report. Board reporting consists largely of boilerplate text aimed at basic compliance, but revealing little insight into board balance, effectiveness or succession planning.

Reporting pays no more than lip service to ethics and the importance of embedding a set of moral values across the organisation to guard against industry vulnerabilities, such as fall-out from the scandal that hit VW, or the threat of collusion with OEMs around parts and servicing. Lack of meaningful engagement with issues that could drive or destroy long-term value suggests a leadership preoccupied with short-term operational performance.

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