LJ Rittenhouse
President, andBEYOND Communications
New York, NY 10025
Telephone: (212) 580-9176
Fax: (212) 580-1906

"Breaking News": Do Business With People You Can Tru$t

These days, the issues of corporate responsibility and credibility in our financial institutions seem to have been placed on the back burner by the media. But we are still working hard to promote transparency and full disclosure in business communications. We're proud to announce that in February 2003, Do Business with People You Can Tru$t will enter its second printing.

Readers continue to order copies of Tru$t through Amazon.com. It's a great last-minute holiday gift for friends and family. Tru$t offers sound advice for all seasons. Here's the latest news:
andBEYOND Goes Global

• Yuki Kobayashi, is Senior Managing Director of IMC, Inc., an investor relations firm in Tokyo. He discovered our work via the Internet two years ago and regularly updates us on the progress of candid communication in Japan. Recently he sent us news about Japan's award winning annual report.
  To read this annual report letter, click the logo:

  About Tru$t, Yuki wrote us:

Your work is very meaningful; one, to define the criteria of quality letters; and two, to prove the significant correlation between the quality of CEO letter and the stock performance. You are successful in comparing good and bad examples. As you say, some hasty investor relations professionals may try to make a formula from your book, but it will not work because CEO letter writing requires a "heart and soul." To be honest, I was surprised that so many U.S. companies fail to follow the basic rules.

• We were also cited by ExpansiónDirecto, a Spanish business and investing website. They referred to andBEYOND in an article on the value of reading annual reports prior to making investment decisions. It said (translated into English):

A study carried out by Laura Rittenhouse, an investor relations expert, shows that stocks of top rated companies in terms of CEO shareholder disclosure rose 7%; the bottom 15% fell 19%.

• Hits to the andBEYOND website continue to come from places as far away as Australia and New Zealand, Zimbabwe and Estonia. Countries that recently top the list with the most visitors include Canada, Singapore, Germany, Belgium and Belize.

Corporate Governance and Communication

• Do Business with People You Can Tru$t ranks as the number one pick of books about business ethics by All-Business-Books, an online business bookstore. Number two was Good Work: When Excellence and Ethics Meet, by Howard Gardner and number three was Corporate Governance, by Robert A. G. Monks.

• Lou Thompson, Director of the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) sized our audience when he said: "One hundred million Americans invest directly or indirectly in the markets. Since March 2000, these investors have lost a collective $7 trillion. Buyside analysts are able to do their own research but what about consumers?" Thompson recommended that Tru$t be listed on NIRI's website reading list.

• Candid communication is a reliable indicator of enlightened and responsible governance. That's the gist of the remarks made by Eliot Spitzer, New York State's Attorney General at a recent NIRI meeting in New York. Now, he has a signed copy of Tru$t, which we hope will be used in his campaign to educate and empower individual investors.

• Bill Rigby recently interviewed Laura about the corporate governance practices of Berkshire Hathaway for Reuters. She suggested that governance practices include making sure the CEO authors the letter and that he or she actively recruits investors to come to the annual shareholders meeting.

Readers Report

• Richard Kline, CEO of Mercury Energy in Canada called to tell us: "This is the best business book I have read in a long time. I couldn't put it down. It has changed the way I talk with my investors." Kline invited Laura to be the keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the Canadian Independent Power Association in Calgary in March - and to bring books!

• Out of the blue we received this inspiring e-mail from Doug Taylor, from the 1st State Bank in North Carolina who learned about Do Business from Jim Chuong's Toronto Investment Club website, TIConline. He wrote us:

I thoroughly enjoyed your informative book, "Do Business With People You Can Tru$t". I will admit that I had no idea that a shareholder's letter held so much information that would be helpful in examining a company for potential investment. If an investor does not feel comfortable that the CEO knows his business and the business' strategy, then the research should end there. Don't waste time examining the mammoth amount of financial information.

Your enthusiastic efforts to champion the lessons reported in Tru$t are tremendously appreciated. They build our word-of-mouth following and are key to the success of our mission to champion candid communication.

As always, we look forward to hearing from you and wish you a happy holiday season!

Stephen