Christopher Balmford - for words and beyond

Major legal documents

Christopher helped create:

  • two internationally significant investor relation plain-language documents for AMP
  • a buy-back agreement for Lend Lease Corporation
  • several Notices of Meeting for public listed companies with large numbers of retail shareholders
  • income securities prospectus
  • several prospectuses for initial public offerings
  • an annual report for a listed public company and its report for market analysts.

With AMP

The AMP Society's Explanatory Memorandum
In 1997, Christopher was the plain-language expert on the core team (made up of an AMP Senior Executive, two other lawyers, and a designer) that worked full-time for nearly four months to create AMP's Explanatory Memorandum. The AMP Board sent that document to the nearly two million members of the AMP Society to help them decide how to vote on whether AMP should demutualise.

AMP's Explanatory Memorandum is widely regarded as the international benchmark document of its type. Ken Morris, (the then President of Siegel & Gale, the New York-based international design and document simplification specialists) said of the document:

I thought the document was one of the finest pieces of simplification that I've seen. ... Hopefully it will prove an inspiration for companies here. Letter to Christopher Balmford 27 October 1997

You can view the Explanatory Memorandum on AMP's shareholder website.

AMP Limited's Prospectus

In 1998, Christopher spent four months working as a plain-language consultant on the team producing AMP Limited's prospectus and related documents. AMP produced:

  • a short-form prospectus for its existing shareholders and the former members of the AMP Society, most of whom were retail investors and all of whom were AMP customers; and
  • a long-form prospectus aimed at institutional investors around the world.

The related documents Christopher worked on included: a buy form, sell form, changes of address form, cover sheet, Chairman's letter, pre-prospectus postcard and letter, and the employee prospectus and forms.

AMP wanted all those documents to communicate clearly to AMP Limited's various constituencies: its customers, its employees, and its shareholders. AMP recognised that the documents have an impact on the brand. And that with plain language, that impact can be positive.

You can view the AMP Limited's listing prospectus on AMP's shareholder website.

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