US SEC to spend $54m on XBRL implementation

News Article - Thursday, November 16, 2006

filed under: Technology

The US' Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced it will spend $54 million (£28.6 million) on making the public company disclosure system more interactive through the extensible business reporting language (XBRL).

With the system currently in use being developed in the 1980s, the SEC will be joining the Federal Reserve in implementing XBRL for use by companies.

The SEC states that approximately 8,200 financial institutions in the US are now using XBRL to submit quarterly call reports to their banking regulators.

According to SEC's chairman Christopher Cox, the announcement "demonstrates the commission's firm commitment to interactive data" and represents "a significant milestone on the road to achieving that goal".

Mr Cox added that the new XBRL system would make it easier to file and use information, representing a "quantum leap" over other disclosure systems currently in existence.

Last month the International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation stated that some XBRL users could become confused by the name convention for the language's Arc-attribute 'use' because it is the same name provided for every standard XML-attribute.

track © Adfero Ltd