Bloomberg News: SEC Chief to Enforce Standard. The rule, which went into effect in October, prohibits companies from giving important news to selected Wall Street analysts before they announce it publicly. It seeks to stop companies from giving briefings to a selected few on market-sensitive information such as earnings, new products and mergers.
Laura S. Unger, acting Securities and Exchange Commission chair, was the only commissioner to vote against the rule. Now she promises to be a vigorous enforcer. Yeah, right.
Some critics of the FD fair-disclosure rule have linked it to the drop in tech stocks. If that's true, it's not an indictment of the rule. It's a statement of how corrupt the system was before the regulation went into effect, when companies whispered their secrets into the ears of selected pet “analysts” and manipulated markets with utter disdain for small investors, the people who really got hurt by the uneven disclosure system.
[Dan Gillmor's eJournal]