Bahrain Telecommunications Company (Batelco) said it has won a bronze award for its 2010 annual report produced by Smart Media at the prestigious International ARC Awards in New York.

The International ARC Awards, which are being held for the past 25 years, has been dubbed the Academy Awards of Annual Reports.

It is the largest international competition honouring excellence in annual reports with twenty-one hundred entries received this year from nearly 40 countries around the world.

Fox Business Network anchor Cheryl Casone presented the awards at a gala evening held in New York’s Plaza Hotel, attended by a large gathering of corporate executives from around the world.
 
Smart Media chairman Dr Vijith Kannangara, who collected the award on behalf of Batelco, recently visited Batelco Headquarters to present the award to Batelco Group chief executive Shaikh Mohamed Bin Isa Al Khalifa.

Dr Kannangara was accompanied by Dilip de S. Wijeyeratne, managing director & CEO of Third Wave International who represents Smart Media in the Kingdom and Affno Middle East country manager Kevin Kumarasinghe. Affno is a sister company of Smart Media.
 
Earlier this year, Batelco’s 2010 annual report won a Silver Award at the LACP (League of American Communications Professionals), said a Batelco statement.

Smart Media is one of the world’s very few specialist Annual Report producers and over the past 15 years has produced over 1,400 annual reports for clients from a wide spectrum of enterprises, it added.
 
“We are very proud that our 2010 Annual Report has won an award at such a prestigious ceremony as the annual ARC Awards, which are held in very high regard internationally,” said a delighted Shaikh Mohamed. 

Global heavyweights such as Deutsche Telecom, Rogers Telecommunications of Canada, China Telecom and SK Telecom of South Korea were in the race for the ARC awards, said Dr Kannangara.

“Batelco has by competing very effectively in this global forum brought honour to the Kingdom of Bahrain and we at Smart Media are proud to have been a part of this effort,” he added.-TradeArabia News Service