Washington, D.C., June 12, 2006 — Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox today announced that, for the first time, the SEC’s information about companies and mutual funds is now fully searchable online. Investors and analysts can now search the full text of every SEC document filed by companies within the last two years. They’ll also be able to quickly and easily identify and retrieve mutual fund filings by fund or share class.
Chairman Cox made the announcement in his opening remarks at the SEC’s Interactive Data Roundtable in Washington, D.C. Interactive data holds the promise of transforming the static, paper-bound documents companies furnish to the SEC into dynamic financial reports that can be quickly and easily accessed and analyzed by millions of users.
“This is a giant leap for America’s 90 million investors toward tapping the full potential of the Internet to provide customized financial information,” said Chairman Cox. “This new full-text search capability will give investors and analysts instant access to the specific information they want.”
The company filing search engine enables real-time, full-text searches of filings on the entirety of the SEC’s EDGAR (Electronic Document, Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval) database of company filings for the last two years. The Commission is also asking users of this Web site feature to supply feedback, including suggestions for additional functions, so that further improvements to the site can be considered and implemented The new search tool can be found at file:///C:/edgar/searchedgar/webusers.htm.
The new mutual fund search is designed to help fund investors identify filings by both individual mutual fund and share class. In the past, searching for information on particular funds and particular share classes within funds was very difficult, because a single prospectus might contain information about many mutual funds and share classes. The new search capability was made possible when the Commission recently required that filings contain a unique numerical identifier for each fund and share class. Investors will be able to find relevant filings by merely searching for the name of their own fund.