XBRL US announced that one of the key findings at its May 28, 2009 conference on corporate actions was the need for public companies to understand the current process and to follow industry-accepted standards in how corporate actions data is created and distributed. The event was held in New York City and attended by over 100 individuals representing securities processors, investor relations officers, software companies and others. The conference was held jointly with Securities Operation Forum and in association with The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and SWIFT.

Thousands of corporate actions such as dividends, bond redemptions, rights offerings and mergers are announced each year by publicly traded companies in the U.S. alone. The financial community, including clearing houses, custodians, transfer agents, stock markets and investors, all follow an accepted ISO standard for corporate actions data but the public companies that issue these announcement do not. The processing of these announcements therefore is mostly handled manually, which results in errors and time-consuming inefficiencies, creating the potential for heavy losses and significant negative impact on investors.

"Issuers are simply not aware of the corporate actions process and therefore not inclined to change the way they distribute event announcements in the current environment," said Jeff Morgan, President and CEO, NIRI. "They need education on what happens to their own announcements once they're issued and how that impacts their most critical stakeholder, the investor. There also needs to be an examination of costs and liabilities throughout the corporate action process to ensure proposed changes to any system offers incentives to all for adopting a new processing standard."

Other key findings from the conference included:

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), SWIFT and XBRL US announced that they will join forces to improve issuer investor communications through technology standards. Click here to read the statement of direction.

Opening session outlined the corporate actions process and highlighted the critical role of the issuer in improving that process. Click here to listen to audio webcast http://xbrl.us/Events/Pages/corpact2009.aspx 

An initial digital dictionary describing a merger corporate actions was unveiled. Read more about the taxonomy and the corporate actions process in the conference handout http://xbrl.us/pages/whitepaper_corpactions.aspx 

Sessions covered topics including standards around the world and using standards to enable straight-through-processing.

"This conference is the starting point in improving the way issuers, securities processors and investors consume corporate announcement information -- enabling faster, better data for reduced cost and greater accuracy," said David Hands, Director, Product Development, DTCC and Chair, XBRL US Corporate Actions Conference Advisory Committee. "We encourage individuals involved in this process to learn more and get involved in how we expect public company announcements will be handled in the future."