Inside the Mind of the SEC

Submitted by Melissa Hoffmann on Thu, 04/30/2009 - 12:12

Have you ever wondered what the Securities and Exchange Commission tells its employees to look for in examinations of a company's financial statements?

Wonder no more, thanks to some light reading from the agency's Division of Corporation Finance.

The SEC's 274-page internal training manual -- recently updated and renamed the Financial Reporting Manual -- is now available online. The agency has also made its constant revision and maintenance a major goal, according to Wayne Carnall, chief accountant of the Division of Corporation Finance, who spoke today at a financial reporting conference held at Baruch College.

Once upon a time, the public was not meant to be privy to this information, but earlier releases of the manual were met with a flood of Freedom of Information Law requests, showing the agency exactly how badly executives and accountants wanted to understand compliance.

"People would line up around the corner," Carnall said. Check it out online (without waiting on line): Read the table of contents. Or view the pdf.

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