Paragraph after paragraph of dense text and financials, a stunningly illustrated business review and a corporate citizenship report - including examples of social value, such as time staff dedicated to voluntary work, number of apprenticeships, and average number of kilowatt hours used in the course of a year. A total of 492 pages. Welcome to Credit Suisse's annual report.

The report landed on Financial News' desks earlier this month, weighing in at a hefty 2.15kg. It is typical of banks' concerted efforts in recent years to demonstrate how transparent they are, the result of which has been letter-box-busting tomes. Credit Suisse's report, for example, has gone from relatively quick bedtime read at 80 pages in 1996/97 to an academic dust-gatherer in 2009/10. That's a 600% growth in bulk and a big task for shareholders to wade through.