"The market has given unusual atten-tion to the report of the Deutsche Bank," noted The Economist of March 5th 1904, "owing to the splendid results announced." This year the Deutsche Bank will announce its results (expected to be less than splendid) on February 5th. In a century the bank has speeded up the production of this vital piece of information by four weeks. Other German firms have persisted with 19th-century reporting schedules. TUI, a big travel group, has declared that it will not reveal its 2003 results until it holds its annual press conference on March 31st. That is much later than most German banks were reporting their annual profits a century ago.
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