Four months after offering new incentives for companies to furnish their financial information in computer-readable interactive data format, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that another trio of firms has joined the fun.
The trio of new companies -- General Electric Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Banco Itaú Holding Financeira SA -- brings the number of participating firms to 20. Only nine companies joined the SEC's first Extensible Business Reporting Language initiative in 2005.
XBRL is a technology that tags financial information through disparate applications and carries it through the business reporting chain.
The 20 participating companies will receive expedited reviews of their SEC registration statements and annual reports.
In a statement, the SEC said that it hopes that Internet applications will soon allow automatic, real-time delivery of SEC financial data direct to anyone's desktop.
The SEC will host the first in a series of interactive data roundtable discussions in Washington on June 12. Topics will include discussions of what information is most helpful to investors, how to accelerate the use of new software that permits the dissemination of interactive financial data, and how best to design the SEC's disclosure requirements to take maximum advantage of the potential of interactive data.
The roundtable will be open to the public with seating on a first-come, first-served basis. It will also be Webcast at the SEC's Web site,
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