Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Christopher Cox has responded favorably to Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s idea that financial disclosures currently required to be made by press release could be posted to a company blog instead.
Schwartz had suggested it in a letter to Cox, and also had posted the correspondence to his blog.
The AP now reports that Cox responded to Schwartz not only by mail, but also on Schwartz’s blog.
“The (SEC) encourages the use of Web sites as a source of information to the market and investors, and we welcome your offer to further discuss with us your views in this area,” Cox told Schwartz in his posting on the CEO’s blog. (He also sent Schwartz a letter by mail.)
Said Cox: “Assuming that the (SEC) were to embrace your suggestion that the ‘widespread dissemination’ requirement of Regulation FD can be satisfied through Web disclosure, among the questions that would need to be addressed is whether there exist effective means to guarantee that a corporation uses its Web site in ways that assure broad non-exclusionary access …”
What could be broader and more non-exclusionary than a company blog, to which anyone can subscribe? I thought this was a great idea when Schwartz suggested it, and I’m really glad to hear Chairman Cox being supportive.
You can read Chairman Cox’s comments in full here.
Regulation FD was designed to prevent insiders and analysts from unfairly trading on insider information. Blogs democratize information and make everyone an insider.
Technorati: SEC, Regulation FD, Sun, Christopher Cox, Jonathan Schwartz, PR, Press Release