Bass, Berry & Sims attorney Scott Holley provided insight on changes to financial reporting rules recently issued by the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC). The following changes were outlined in a Strategic Finance article:
- Increasing flexibility in the discussion of historical periods in the management discussion and analysis (MD&A).
- Allowing companies to redact confidential information from most exhibits without filing a confidential treatment request.
- Incorporating technology to improve access to information on the cover page of certain filings.
As Scott explains, “The change that is likely to have the most impact on accountants is the change to MD&A that will allow issuers to exclude discussion of the earliest of three years in MD&A in a Form 10-K if they have already included the discussion in a prior EDGAR [Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval] filing. This will remove one year of prior-period data on which auditors have traditionally been asked to provide comfort.”
The full article, “SEC Finalizes Accounting Changes,” was published by Strategic Finance on June 1, 2019, and is available online.