It's already abridged, mind you!

I received this through the post yesterday: another big, fat document. This time, the document consisted of 416 pages, inclusive of the covers, coming from Public Bank Berhad to announce their renounceable rights issue exercise. (Yes, yes, I know, I am a very small and insignificant shareholder of this public-listed company.)

This volume from Public Bank comes in the wake of the even thicker "circular" document from JobStreet Corporation Berhad some two months earlier that had weighed in with 488 pages of print. Talk about wordiness and verbosity! It's as if paper is costless.

I don't have the time to look through the whole document and I doubt many shareholders would. But I did glance through the first few pages and especially, the cover. There, in red print, appeared this line: "THIS ABRIDGED PROSPECTUS IS IMPORTANT AND REQUIRES YOUR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION."

Imagine, if this 416-page book is only an "abridged" version, I really wonder how thick would be the full and complete prospectus, not that I would want to read that complete version too. But I would be interested to find out how many pages are in the unabridged version.