The future of enhanced investor’s information is out there. It is not really clear if we are getting all the data needed in order to make a wise investment decision.
Examples:
Cyber-related disclosures and a new auditor’s report which may provide investors with more meaningful information about the audit, including significant estimates and judgments, significant unusual transactions, and other areas of risk at a company. Moreover, auditors could offer their views on corporate culture, diversity, or cybersecurity preparedness. Moreover, the auditor could offer assurance to a company’s audit committee about the fair presentation of non-GAAP measures, KPIs, or a host of other information communicated to investors. For more information please read the SEC staff speech enclosed herein.
Other SEC’s staff member concerns with unclear fund disclosures, generic risk disclosures, Mutual fund summary prospectuses that are much longer than the brief documents the Commission intended, individual sentences that contain over 70 words, explanations of tracking error with more than 1,000 words, “summary” risk disclosure that is identical to the full-scale risk disclosure in the statutory prospectus, and passages so full of jargon that even experience staff – who review fund disclosures for a living – pull out the reference guides.
Our last example concern exchanges, according to the “The State of America’s Stock Markets” speech, we may need to get an answer for the following questions:
- The reason is that exchanges offer controversial payments—they call them rebates, to brokers based on the volume of customer orders that broker sends to that exchange?
- When a broker places an order on behalf of a customer, we expect the broker to send the order to the exchange that is likely to get the best price for their customers. But to nobody’s surprise, research shows that brokers very often send their orders to the exchange that gives the broker the biggest rebate. No doubts we need to inform about such practices.