TheCorporateCounsel.net

On the heels of the recent widely reported, fabricated Avon bid that revealed flaws in the Edgar system, the Business Roundtable, CAQ, FEI and Chamber of Commerce recently filed this joint Edgar-focused comment letter in connection with the SEC’s Disclosure Effectiveness initiative.

The letter suggests a number of near-term Edgar improvements pending implementation of longer-term enhancements and SEC rulemaking. The recommendations focus on consolidating and updating current Edgar search features by improving their visibility and organization, and additional enhancements – including improvements to the company search page, filings detail screen and output functionality. Recommendations are detailed and well-illustrated in the letter’s “Appendix A” via mock-ups of existing web pages accompanied by additional commentary. 

The business coalition’s suggestions dovetail nicely with Corp Fin Director Keith Higgins’ remarks at last month’s SEC Advisory Committee on Small & Emerging Companies meeting, wherein he reportedly characterized full Edgar Modernization as a 10-year process, but noted that there are things the Commission can do in the interim to make information more easily available to investors.

See also this recent letter, where Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Charles Grassley sought responses from SEC Chair White to multiple questions concerning Edgar processes and vulnerabilities, and this Compliance Week article.

Edgar Gets an Upgrade – No Longer Supports 2013 GAAP

As noted in this Accounting Today article, the SEC’s recently upgraded Edgar will no longer support 2013 GAAP or XBRL:

The Securities and Exchange Commission has upgraded its EDGAR online system for financial filings and will no longer support an older version of the U.S. GAAP financial reporting taxonomy. The SEC said Tuesday that it upgraded EDGAR on Monday to Release 15.2 and it no longer supports the 2013 U.S. GAAP financial reporting taxonomy and the 2013 EXCH taxonomy for XBRL, or Extensible Business Reporting Language. The SEC staff is strongly encouraging companies to use the most recent version of taxonomy releases for their XBRL exhibits to take advantage of the most up-to-date tags related to new accounting standards and other improvements.

More on “The Mentor Blog”

We continue to post new items daily on our blog – “The Mentor Blog” – for TheCorporateCounsel.net members. Members can sign up to get that blog pushed out to them via email whenever there is a new entry by simply inputting their email address on the left side of that blog. Here are some of the latest entries:

– Delaware Chancery Addresses the New Delaware Ratification Law
– Study: Boards Increasing in Size to Add Women Directors
– Insider Trading Policy/Program Considerations
– SASB Standards Cheat Sheet: Interactive Materialty Map
– Managing Political Spending Disclosure Pressures

– by Randi Val Morrison