Section 409 472
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Have anyone started looking thoroughly at this one?
What might be the impact(s)?
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Section 409: Real Time Disclosure.
(l) Real Time Issuer Disclosures.–Each issuer reporting under section 13(a) or 15(d) shall disclose to the public on a rapid and current basis such additional information concerning material changes in the financial condition or operations of the issuer, in plain English, which may include trend and qualitative information and graphic presentations, as the Commission determines, by rule, is necessary or useful for the protection of investors and in the public interest.
I don’t see much evidence of significant effort being put into 409 compliance :?
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Just found this article
cfoproject.com/document.asp?d_id=2278
Story is in response to (unscrupulous?) software vendors that are encouraging clients to beef up their systems to comply with 409. The suggestion in the article is that 409 compliance ties into events that trigger the requirement to file an 8-K- Change in control;
- Acquisition or disposition of assets;
- Bankruptcy or receivership;
- Changes in the certifying accountant;
- Resignations of directors;
- Publications of financial statements and exhibits;
- Change in fiscal year;
- Any disclosure under Regulation FD;
- Amendments to the registrant’s code of ethics or waiver of a provision of the code of ethics;
- Temporary suspension of trading under the employee benefit plans;
- Results of operations and financial condition; or
- Other materially important events.
The common thread to all but Regulation FD and ‘material events’ items is management never learns of these developments through corporate reporting systems. Conceivably the other two actions may be driven by reporting systems (e.g., companies pre-announcing quarterly results) but these are derived from existing systems and there is no legal compulsion to actively use IT systems to discover material events.