The April issue of E-Minders is now available!

The FASB’s New Exposure Draft on Options Expensing

As expected, the FASB issued its exposure draft on options expensing yesterday. Comments are due by June 30, 2004. Here is the link to the FASB document that has links to the actual Proposed Statement and Appendices – a total of 229 pages of a pdf document. However, it is in segments consisting of the Proposed Statement (25 pages) and 7 appendices, each of which can be separately downloaded.

Hear what Bob Herz, Chair of the FASB, thinks about the new exposure draft on the NASPP’s webcast – “The FASB’s Expensing Exposure Draft—What it Says and How to Implement It” – on April 19th. In addition to Bob, Paul Munter, Partner, KPMG’s National Office and Ted Buyniski, Principal, Mellon Human Resources & Investor Solutions will discuss the nuances of the exposure draft and explore the various alternatives available to implement the proposed new standards. Try a no-risk trial to the NASPP and catch this exciting webcast!

Upcoming EDGAR Changes

Based on the newly released draft EDGAR manual, Form IDs soon will be required to be filed electronically – and notarized copies faxed to the SEC – before they can be processed by the SEC staff.

In addition, all existing filers will have to create a passphrase before they can continue filing. These passphrases will allow filers to reset passwords, PMAC, and CCC codes (in the past, a Form ID was required to be filed if any of these codes were forgotten or if a password expired). Another change is that the length of company and individual names can now be up to 150 characters.

These changes are scheduled to take effect on April 26th (the draft manual says the 24th, the most recent web notice says 26th). Learn more on Section16.net.

Sarbanes-Oxley to be Repealed!

I couldn’t resist an April Fool’s joke. Now, off to Seattle for the ABA Spring Meeting -and then on a quasi-vacation next week (ie – working at half-speed, but still intend to blog)…