Congratulations to Ivan Menezes, new chief executive of Diageo. In his first outing he has smashed predecessor Paul Walsh's record for the most uses of the word "strong" or its derivatives "stronger" and "strongly" in a preliminary results announcement.
Last year Diageo scored 57 mentions, more even than the 41 recorded in 2011. But under Menezes the Johnnie Walker-to-Guinness combine has clocked up a remarkable 76, including 74 in the first 15 pages of the release, a rate of almost five a page.
And let's not overlook six uses of the word "strength".
The serious point here is that corporate results announcements are not meant to be extended boasts. Diageo is indeed performing consistently well for shareholders (except in southern Europe, which is fast becoming a wasteland), but page after page of "strongs" numbs the mind.
For the third year in a row, the headline on the prelims contains the phrase "a strong business getter stronger". The real message conveyed by the repetition is laziness, which presumably is not how Diageo manages to keep earnings per share rising at more than 10% a year.
For an example of how to present results, Menezes should look to Lord Wolfson at Next, who strives every year to tell shareholders something new about the mechanics of the company. If Menezes can't match that (few bosses can), he should opt for brevity.
