Management’s Discussion and Analysis (MD&A)
The SEC requires all publicly held companies to include an MD&A section in their annual reports. The reasons for including this information in the annual report were originally outlined in SFAC No. 1, which stated:
Management knows more about the enterprise and its affairs than investors, creditors, or other “outsiders” and can often increase the usefulness of financial information by identifying certain transac- tions, other events, and circumstances that affect the enterprise and explaining their financial impact on it.5