
Thomson Reuters ONE feed added to Yahoo! Finance
AFTER weeks of testing and waiting, Thomson Reuters corporate clients in North America and Europe can finally distribute their news releases directly to Yahoo! Finance.
SEC greenlights "notice-and-access" news releases
THE US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) new guidance for company websites gives investor relations departments an opportunity to cut their disclosure costs and boost traffic to their websites by using “notice-and-access” news releases for Regulation FD. Although the SEC’s guidance goes so far as to say that “some companies” may not need to use [...]
SEC to rule soon on websites for Reg. FD
THE US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is expected to address within the next three months whether companies can meet their obligations under Regulation FD by posting information on their corporate websites and in RSS feeds, according SEC Chairman Chris Cox. The issue is among three areas that the SEC’s Advisory Committee on Improvements to [...]
SEC proposes rule to make XBRL mandatory
THE US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is proposing a rule for all companies to file their annual and quarterly reports in eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) on a staged basis over the next three years. Under the proposal, the 500 largest companies — including foreign firms that use US GAAP — will begin filing [...]
Is there a disclosure issue here?
TAKE a look at these news releases put out this week by two New York Stock Exchange-listed companies about awards they’ve received for their investor relations websites and their disclosure practices. The first is from Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligents SA, the airline firm listed on the NYSE under the symbol GOL. SAO PAULO, Brazil, April [...]
SEC adds free news feeds to EDGAR
IN A move that portends dramatic changes in how disclosures are disseminated online, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has added news feeds for every issuer and reporting person who files with the commission’s EDGAR database. The development is potentially bad news for news release distributors such as Business Wire, owned by Berkshire Hathaway, [...]
Talking about transparency
I WAS interviewed for 45 minutes last Friday by well-known communications consultant Shel Holz for a book he is co-authoring on the topic of “practical transparency.” Shel is one of the thought leaders on the topic of communications and technology. He has written and spoken about it extensively over the years, in various books, reports, [...]
Earnings releases — the Warren Buffett way
WHILE his competitors lavish huge fees on his PR wire service, frugal billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is being thrifty by keeping its earnings releases short and referring investors to complete disclosures on the company’s website. Ironically, management at Business Wire, acquired by Buffett in March 2006, has argued vehemently against other companies following its [...]
Takeover bid sites, old-economy style
WITH tech titans Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO) poised for a brawl, it might be useful for the two to see examples of companies that are right now using the Web to effectively present their bid propaganda. Ironically, the examples I have to share, whipped up after a quick Google News search [...]
Microsoft, Yahoo! IR teams drop ball amid bid
IF YOU’RE a Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) or Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) shareholder, you’ve probably heard the news — thanks in no part to the companies’ investor relations departments. Yes, on February 1, 2008 Microsoft proposed to acquire Yahoo! for $31 per share, apparently comprised of half cash and half Microsoft shares, or something like that. [...]
NYSE's antiquated Timely Alert Policy
THE NEW YORK STOCK EXCHANGE wrote to its listed companies last week to remind them of their disclosure obligations, including its policy around issuing news releases about material information. The exchange said that it “feels strongly that its longstanding policy of requiring a press release for the dissemination of material corporate information is in the [...]
My gibberish was first, no mine was
PERHAPS I shouldn’t be so flippant about XBRL, a technology that almost everyone seems to think is a big deal, but I’m more turned on by the offbeat side of events around the financial tagging language than the serious stuff. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably know that the XBRL U.S. GAAP [...]
Lululemon takes the PR low road
Updated: Canada law enforcement agency moves against company, which agrees to pull “therapeutic and performance” claims from clothing tags. EARLIER this week, I wrote about how a short-seller had inspired The New York Times to conduct lab tests that found no evidence of seaweed content in clothing sold by Lululemon athletica (NASDAQ:LULU). In the prospectus [...]