Shareholders solely depend on annual reports to make investment, credit and other decisions. Investors expect that information should be reliable, relevant, comparable, consistent and thus easy to use for decision making. But whether the importance of annual reports to all shareholders is equally significant is a question of research. Thus, this research study tries to find out the importance of reading annual reports to the investors. A questionnaire survey is conducted on investors considering thirty one general shareholders and six brokers. This research based survey finds that most of the shareholders have no knowledge about accounting or finance and they have little knowledge about capital markets due to lack of training. This study also finds that general shareholders read an annual report at least moderately except value added statement, chairman’s review, director’s report and rumor. This study recommends human resource should be developed through adequate training, and annual reports should provide transparent and quality information which will ultimately increase the confidence of investors.

1. Introduction
 2. Objectives of the Study
 3. Literature Review
 4. Methodology
 5. Data Analysis
  5.1. Knowledge of Shareholders
  5.2. Capability or Scope of Reading Annual Reports
  5.3. Reading Annual Report
  5.4. Perceived Importance of Information Sources forInvestment Decisions
  5.5. Importance of Annual Report Contents to theShareholders
  5.6. Degree of Thoroughness of Reading of AnnualReport
  5.7. Stockbrokers’ Importance and Thoroughness
  5.8. Degree of Thoroughness of Reading AnnualReport Perceived Users
 6. Findings
 7. Recommendation and Conclusion
 References

• Naima Khatun(Kobe University, Japan) Corresponding Author
• Jannatul Naima(Lecturer, Dept. of Accounting & Information Systems, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh)
• Ziaul Karim(Lecturer, School of Business and Economics, United International University, Bangladesh.)
• Lamia Alam(Lecturer, School of Business and Economics, United International University, Bangladesh)