In a developing country such as Saudi Arabia where alternative sources of company information tend to be more limited in a quantity and quality, the role of corporate annual reports for investment activities assumes a much more dominant and prominent role than in the more advanced and economically developed countries. This study was undertaken to examine empirically the usefulness of corporate annual reports to investment analysts in Saudi Arabia and their role in the investment activities. Before undertaking the empirical investigation it was essential to provide a background of the economic and accounting environment under which the Saudi companies operate and investment activities being carried out. Three chapters are designed to fulfil this objective, these are Chapter 2,3 and 4. Chapter 5 is focused in reviewing the literature related to usefulness of financial information. This review is believed to be an important step in providing a framework for the empirical investigation. To achieve the main objective of this research which is to evaluate the importance of corporate annual reports to the investment analysts in Saudi Arabia, a questionnaire survey was carried out to obtain the investment analysts views of the annual reports, the importance they attached to them and the uses of these reports in their investment activities. The results of the survey are presented and discussed in chapters seven and eight. The statistical tests results show that Saudi Arabian investment analysts, despite the differences in their background characteristics, still regard corporate annual reports as the most important source of information for their investment activities. A summary of the main conclusions of the study, as well as a number of recommendations, are reported in the final chapter.