The SEC concurs people really DO use Websites as a primary resource
Some interesting news last night - As reported in IR Web Report and elsewhere, the SEC yesterday has determined that "under certain circumstances, companies can rely on their websites and blogs to meet the public disclosure requirements under Regulation FD, according to new guidance unanimously approved by the US Securities and Exchange Commission today."
This is a big shift, but it is one that recognizes the changing communications landscape and the vehicles that key stakeholders use to research and gather information. One of my clients pointed out to me that Jonathan Schwartz from Sun must be happy, as he has been campaigning for this for a while, and took some pretty dramatic steps.
This is no longer the mid 80s and 90s when I was using my 300 baud modem to dial up to Compuserve for my news, or using an MCIMail account. With the wide availability of the Web, its increasing role in breaking news, and technologies such as RSS and Atom (which the SEC chairman mention), it is high time this change occurred.
This is not carte blanche to post information on the Web site, and this is not the death knell for newswires. There are subtleties to this ruling that I am still parsing (and reading about from others, such as Jennifer Leggio). There are stipulations. I am sure they are going to want to make sure the information is in a visible place and not buried on some obscure page. I would not counsel my public clients to changing things tomorrow - but we all need to read up and learn more about this.
What do you think? Will more companies follow Sun's lead, or is what Sun is doing just the tip of the iceberg? Either way, the next few months are going to see some major shifts in the way people are approaching this, and I look forward to working with my clients and their CFOs and IR firms to navigate this new landscape.
Tags: disclosure, RegFD
Posted by Mark McClennan on July 31, 2008 at 5:24 PM
