WASHINGTON, DC/ — XBRL US, the nonprofit consortium for XML business reporting, announced highlights from its national conference, “XBRL Financial Reporting: Advancing Transparency, Transforming the Dialogue” that was held on November 17-18, 2009 at the Marriott Marquis in New York City.Over 230 financial executives, analysts, investor relations professionals and service providers attended the 1 ½ day program that covered lessons learned from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) XBRL mandate for US GAAP reporting, how public companies can use XBRL for their own analysis and what’s ahead for public companies with XBRL.
Major themes identified in the conference include the move towards more practical implementation with lessons learned about XBRL filings from public companies, the SEC and the audit community. The message sent by keynotes and panelists was that XBRL implementation is well underway, best practices are being established in the first wave of the roll-out and all companies need to get educated and up-to-speed. The XBRL Essentials program, a separate track that provided practical education on creating XBRL-formatted financials to comply with the SEC’s reporting requirements, was well attended by financial executives seeking to understand what their external reporting teams must do in the XBRL roll-out.
A secondary theme was the future of public company reporting and how XBRL can and will factor into areas such as: corporate actions, internal reporting and government reporting. It was noted that an improvement in data quality means better benchmarking and a greater ability to understand economic activity.
Keynote speeches were presented by:
- Conference Chairman Taylor Hawes, CFO Intellectual Property & Licensing, Microsoft Corporation and Chair, speaking on investor communication
- Donald F. Donahue, Chairman and CEO, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, covering corporate actions and securities processing
- Marie N. Hollein, President and CEO, Financial Executives International, on the next phase of XBRL for government reporting and public company internal reporting
- Jeff Morgan, President and CEO, National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI), on investor communication
- James P. Donovan, Senior Executive Vice President, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), on the value of common reporting standards
- Kurt N. Schacht, JD, CFA, Managing Director, CFA Institute Centre for Financial Market Integrity, on analyst awareness and use of XBRL
During the conference, XBRL US Labs also announced a Call for Research Partners in the areas of harmonization of XBRL with other standards such as ISO 20022 for financial services and the Federal Government’s NIEM framework, and advanced work on XML and XBRL implementations in the areas of identity management, extensibility, and rendering of tagged documents and data streams.
About XBRL
XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) is a royalty-free, open specification for software that uses XML data tags to describe business and financial information for public and private companies and other organizations. XBRL benefits all members of the information supply chain by utilizing a standards-based method with which users can prepare, publish in a variety of formats, exchange and analyze business and financial statements and the information they contain.
About XBRL US
XBRL US is the non-profit consortium for XML business reporting standards in the United States and is a jurisdiction of XBRL International. It represents the business information supply chain, including accounting firms, software companies, financial databases, financial printers and government agencies. Its mission is to support the implementation of XML business reporting standards through the development of taxonomies relevant for use by US public and private sectors, working with a goal of interoperability between sectors, and by promoting adoption of these taxonomies through the collaboration of all business reporting supply chain participants. XBRL US has developed taxonomies to support U.S. GAAP and common reporting practices, the Risk Return Summary in mutual fund prospectuses and the Schedule of Investments under contract with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The XBRL US GAAP Taxonomies are available for review.
Contacts:
Michelle Savage
Vice President, Communications
XBRL US
917-747-1714
michelle.savage@xbrl.us
