SEC Makes Analyzing Corporate Performance Easier for Investors

PDF version   On Friday February 15, 2008, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced the launch of the "Financial Explorer" on the SEC website to help investors more easily analyze the financial results of public companies and mutual funds. Financial Explorer is an eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) viewer. Financial Explorer illustrates corporate financial performance with diagrams and charts, using financial information provided to the SEC by public companies and mutual funds. (To view the notice, please visit http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2008/2008-22.htm.)

Since the introduction of the XBRL Voluntary Program in 2005, the SEC has encouraged public companies and mutual funds to use interactive data to make it easier for investors to get information from the company’s SEC filings. Interactive data pinpoints all of the facts and figures of a corporate annual report or a mutual fund prospectus, allowing investors to immediately pull out the financial information they want, and compare it to the results of other companies, to performance in past years, and to industry averages. Currently, more than three dozen companies, representing more than $1 trillion of market value, have joined the XBRL Voluntary Program and have agreed to submit their annual, quarterly and other reports with interactive data for a period of a year. (To view the Financial Explorer on the SEC website, please visit http://209.234.225.154/viewer/home/.)

Investment Management FYI is a service of the Investment Management Practice of Morgan Lewis. If you have any questions concerning the important legal developments reflected herein, please contact either of the following Morgan Lewis attorneys:

Washington, D.C.
Monica Parry    
202.739.5692   
mparry@morganlewis.com

Ryan E. Gibbs    
202.739.5282   
ryan.gibbs@morganlewis.com