SEC gets a lesson on late Friday disclosure
EVERYONE knows that if you have bad news to deliver then the best time to do so is late on a Friday afternoon. That’s when reporters are distracted and editors are heading home for the weekend. And probably the most-prized Friday or all is the one just before a Christmas long-weekend. You can be almost [...]
Another newswire sold! Sixth deal this year.
IN THE sixth newswire deal this year, Canada’s second largest news release distributor CCNMatthews is being acquired by the private equity arm of Canadian pension fund OMERS. The cash deal, terms of which were not disclosed, will also see Manulife Capital, the private equity group of insurer Manulife Financial, take a minority stake. CCNMatthews, which [...]
Cookie-cutter IR websites bad, says ex-insider
A FORMER employee of a large IR website vendor has written a damning insider’s account of how such firms bully their clients into buying off-the-shelf packages that fail to deliver value to companies and their investors. Lily Napier, who spent six years as a senior IR consultant for Hemscott, the UK equivalent of Thomson Financial [...]
The most-hyped technologies for IR in 2006
LOOKING back on 2006, which technologies relevant to investor relations failed to live up to the hype that surrounded them? Fortunately, the list is short because IR websites were not the scene of much innovation during 2006. Relatively few new technologies even registered a blip among the 525 sites in our survey. Some of the [...]
Dear Directors: You’re Screwed.
IT LOOKS like the coming proxy season in the United States is going to be the most controversial one that anyone can remember. According to the experts quoted in an excellent article on Forbes.com by Directorship‘s managing editor Joan Warner, the “central issues in the coming proxy season all point to large-scale and lasting ‘democratization’ [...]
With e-proxy, SEC signals it gets the Web
THE US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) today voted to let companies move to default Internet delivery of annual shareholder documents. Stressing that investors can still ask for free paper documents under its voluntary “e-proxy” process, commissioners voted 5-0 to allow companies to ditch bulk mailings of proxy materials and move to a “notice and [...]
More ballot stuffing on Nasdaq bundling plan?
WHAT is it with Nasdaq and its plan to bundle investor relations services with its listing fees that seems to attract fake supporters? You will recall that back in October I wrote about how somebody seemed to try to rig a National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI) members poll in Nasdaq’s favor. (See Someone Cheated on [...]
SEC set to give away its XBRL trump card
AT A MEETING tomorrow, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to approve new rules that will allow companies to only mail annual meeting materials to shareholders who specifically ask for them. If it does so, I think the SEC will be giving away the best bargaining chip it has to encourage companies [...]
Nasdaq should get out of press release, website business
NASDAQ has sparked an uproar among its listed firms and investor relations service providers with a proposal to bundle news releases and website services into its listing fees. We cover the furor over the proposal in a separate story. In this article, I want to address a question posed by at least one company in [...]
Nasdaq gets black eye over fee hike
THE Nasdaq Stock Market has provoked an unprecedented uproar among its listed companies over a proposal to raise its listing fees and force them to pay for investor relations services from firms the exchange owns. In a major embarrassment for the exchange, dozens of investor relations officers, CFOs and other executives have written to the [...]
Reader Survey: What You Said
TWO days ago, we asked you to tell us what you want from IR Web Report by completing a short reader survey. Here, in brief, is what you told us: Types of posts you prefer We were wondering if the “Daily Digests” of news articles were worth the trouble. Each one of these posts is [...]
SEC launches XBRL viewer
THE US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has launched a new Web-based tool that allows investors to view XBRL documents filed with the commission. Called the Interactive Financial Report Viewer, the online application converts raw XBRL filings into something humans can read. And while that’s all it does — it does so quite well. SEC [...]
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