Most popular posts in October
HERE’s a list of the most visited posts on this blog over the past month based on page views as recorded by Google Analytics. During the month, we passed a milestone of sorts with 500 posts since we started this blog. 1. SEC’s notice-and-access model is a mess 2. Great Online Annual Report Designers 3. [...]
A mock "notice-and-access" earnings release
FOLLOWING up on my earlier post about a “notice-and-access” concept for disclosure news releases as a way to cut costs for issuers, I thought it would be interesting to put together a mock release based on an actual company’s quarterly results.Merck & Co., Inc. (NYSE: MRK), the pharmaceutical giant, reported Q3 2007 earnings earlier today [...]
A "notice-and-access" model for news releases
WE don’t believe there is any value for investors or companies in continuing the practice of sending full-text news or earnings releases via PR wire services. As such, we are proposing an alternative model that uses PR wire services as notification systems rather than news distribution systems. This will lead to substantial cost savings for [...]
Business Wire, Yahoo! roll out readable releases
AFTER almost of decade of putting up with archaic news release text and garbled financial tables, Yahoo! Finance users may finally be getting company news releases they can easily read and reuse. Yesterday, I noticed that the world’s most popular finance website is using Business Wire‘s XHTML-based newsfeed, potentially ushering in a new era of [...]
Fixing finance calendars with microformats
FINANCIAL event calendars provided by the likes of Thomson Reuters, Zacks, Wall Street Horizon and a bunch of others are broken. They are often incomplete and sometimes just plain wrong. Fixing this mess could save companies a lot of money, improve the flow of information to investors, and help firms meet their fair disclosure obligations. [...]
If I was running a PR wire service…
I WOULD announce tomorrow morning that my company will distribute free of charge any news release that any public company anywhere in the world is issuing for securities regulatory reasons. However, there would be three conditions for disclosure releases to be free: The release must be required to be filed in an 8-K or 6-K [...]
Web 2.0 is delayed, please be patient
DON’T know about you, but I’m finally getting tired of all the noise and nonsense coming from communications, marketing, public relations and even IR consultants like me who blog and podcast. I’m talking about the endless parade of posts about all the new technologies that are going to “revolutionize” business, change the world and make [...]
Marketwire’s NIRI spin machine in overdrive
AS ALMOST 1,500 members of the IR profession were headed home from the NIRI Annual Conference yesterday, the re-energized and almost-giddy folks at newly re-branded Marketwire were taking one last spin in the PR machine with what is hands-down the oddest release of the week. Thom Brodeur, the newswire company’s almost-new senior vice president of [...]
NIRI annual conference release roundup
THE National Investor Relations Institute’s (NIRI) annual conference is in full swing at the Grand Lakes Resort in Orlando, Florida, and once again it’s time for vendors to trot out their new products and make major announcements. So here are the annual conference news releases from a variety of vendors (with notes from me in [...]
What really happened in Business Wire hacking case?
THE SEC has finalized its case against two Estonian citizens and a financial services firm for hacking into Business Wire’s computer system and trading in advance of more than 360 press releases — but how the scheme was pulled off remains shrouded in mystery.
Sun IR should now practice what CEO preaches
LIKE many in the investor relations community, I’ve been following and commenting on the public discussion between Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission about Regulation FD and corporate website disclosures. In a letter to U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox that he posted on his blog a [...]
Nasdaq's IR services conflicts in the spotlight
By Dominic Jones SIX weeks ago, I said Nasdaq should be forced to sell its press release and website hosting subsidiaries because they create an unacceptable conflict of interest between the exchange’s business interests and its role as a regulator. You can see my original comments in Nasdaq should get out of press release, website [...]
For-profit stock exchanges abusing their power
THE inherent conflict of interest between stock exchanges’ unique regulatory status and their new standing as for-profit companies is causing problems for US regulators. Critics are questioning separate proposals by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and NASDAQ to raise fees for services that are mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission or the exchanges’ [...]
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