It has not yet happened, but does that make it a bad idea?

It takes 1,853 trees to produce the paper for the print-run for a big company, an Australian newspaper columnist has pointed out.

And even then, the information is eventually sent to the dustbin, ignored by investors who want simpler information which give more on what their hard cash is working towards as opposed to how it’s been handled.

The argument for real-time issuing of data, made last week by a coalition of the ‘Big Six’ firms is that investors would have information at their fingertips.

Senior partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers Peter Wyman said everyone seemed to be complaining about financial reporting: ‘But it’s really a matter of put-up or shut-up. It’s incumbent for everyone to enter into this debate.

‘What we’re saying is that information moves markets. The information that investors require is not always the information that regulators want rules on…its important to get the two aligned and shareholders need to be more active than they have been in the past,’ said Wyman.

How would it be audited? Wyman says the internal processes, from which the data emanates, would have to be audited.

The US however is the only place that has so far expressed its approval of real-time reporting, and the SEC the only regulator to fully embrace it through the extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). But it has not exactly taken off.

Critics have come out saying it is quality, not quantity of information that they want. In other words,

information that is useful, and that will not drastically affect share-prices, leading to volatility of otherwise stable companies.

Senior finance directors last week publicly criticised the concept, saying investors wanted information that was more reliable and relevant.

The chances of real-time reporting becoming possible are strong, given strides in technology and the current existence of software that can do the job. But is it something that people will actually use?