SEC Lets Companies Disclose Via Websites, Blogs

edadams passes along a note in the ABA Journal that reads "Corporations may now sometimes fulfill their public disclosure requirements under Regulation FD by posting information on their websites and blogs, rather than having news releases distributed by third-party companies, according to new guidance issued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The move is expected to cut compliance costs." Here is the SEC's policy announcement.

Comments

Re:How is archival of this data managed?

[u38cg]

Generally the value of this data is time-limited. I'm more concerned about how difficult it is going to be for the media to pick up important stories in a timely manner if they have to scour blogs and investor relations sites to glean newsworthy details. A third-party company can prioritise and feed important information to the market effectively.

Re:Impermanence of websites

[antifoidulus]

The SEC under Bush has made it quite clear that you as a shareholder do not own the company, the CEO and board do. This is just another example of how shareholders are getting fucked. Hell, the SEC ruled that you as a shareholder have almost NO recourse if the board picks a terrible CEO and then rewards them with tons of money. The SEC as of late is just another reason that despite being an American citizen, I refuse to invest my money in the United States. Bush has made it quite clear that the wealth that has been built up over the past 2 hundred years is meant to be devoured by a few greedy, incompetent, but well connected morons. If some scraps fall to the ground for the shareholders or employees, that is just collateral damage.

Re:Blogs?

[rtb61]

There is no case for self publication, it is fraught with dangerous legal interpretation. Quality of bandwidth, whether all investors gain access at the same time, the site remaining accessible, let alone the issues of editing. Then the is the hacking of web sites and editing the now legal announcements, is the company then criminally negligent for failing to secure the data.

A central achieved copy for legal purposes is a requirement to ensure all investors gain equal access to all announcements, the cost in terms of the trillions of dollars invested in corporations is negligible.

Personally I would think it would make more sense to expand the service of the SEC so that they could handle all announcements and third parties could pick it up from there to redistribute or investors can go direct.

It's a business opportunity

[smittyoneeach]

Whoever aggregates all of these disclosures, and rates companies based on their accuracy and fidelity over time, is probably going to have a lot of customers.

Re:Impermanence of websites

[Notquitecajun]

You're missing out on a lot of good the SEC has done in the last few years, then. They're the only guys not out glory-hogging and actually doing a few things to keep the market and regulations under control. They've limited - and are trying to further limit - naked short-selling and blatant stock manipulation; and, in particular, they did about as well as they could in the whole Bear Stearns debacle:

http://spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13479 - yes, I know it's the Spectator, but it's a good review of Chris Cox. If you're mad at the government for actually staying out of the way of businesses, you're not being smart with your money. Overpaid CEO's of failing companies are a DROP in the bucket of everything that matters right now, and if that's your sole concern, you're going to lose out at one of the best times to buy into the market in your lifetime.