So Sarbanes-Oxley has improved CEO transparency? Think again.

CEO candor in letters to shareholders, one gauge of candid and comprehensive disclosure, has declined since Enron and Sarbanes-Oxley, according to the 2005 Rittenhouse Candor Rankings. What we have instead now is more obfuscation, jargon and double-speak that render accounts and reports as clear as pea soup.

According to the survey, only 24 per cent of companies in the latest survey were awarded top marks for candor, well down from the 57 per cent in 2002.

Top companies in the Rankings were Wells Fargo, Alcoa, JetBlue Airways, PepsiCo, Walgreens, Jack in the Box, Continental Airlines, Charles Schwab, Harley Davidson and Xerox.

The worst, and some of these are not surprising, were Bear Stearns, AMD, Merck, Pfizer, ExxonMobil, AOL TimeWarner, Avon, Motorola, Humana and Cigna.

All of which shows the limitations of legislating transparency and disclosure.