SEC ACCELERATES AND EXPANDS FORM 8-K REPORTING
The SEC’s new rules amending the requirements for Current Reports on Form 8-K under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 go into effect on August 23, 2004. The new rules:
- accelerate the filing deadlines for most required reports on Form 8-K to four business days from the current deadlines of up to fifteen days,
- expand the types of business, financial and management events required to be reported on Form 8-K, and
- adopt a limited safe harbor for failure to file timely certain required Form 8-K reports.
The new Form 8-K requirements are intended to provide investors with important information about public companies on a "real time" basis, furthering the goals of Section 409 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. The changes to Form 8-K do not require immediate disclosure of all material developments, but rather identify certain "presumptively material" categories of events that will now be subject to mandatory current reporting.
