SEC okays bourse policy posting notices on website

The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the Philippine Stock Exchange’s policy on the posting of corporate disclosures and exchange announcements on its website.

To ensure the timely release of market information to the investing public, the PSE has extended until 4 p.m. the posting of company disclosures on its website.

The SEC’s Markets Regulation Department said it poses no objection to its implementation "considering that the process is basically just a transformation of the practice of printing hard copies of corporate disclosures and announcements and distributing them electronically via the PSE’s Maktrade system."

According to the MRD, the new approach will be more beneficial to investors as they will be able to view the information at the same time as the trading participants via the PSE website.

The new approach is expected to achieve a faster dissemination of material information to market players and will lessen the costs to the exchange, which had to reproduce hard copies under the old set-up.

The PSE said investors who wish to acess hard copies of corporate disclosures can still do so by filing a request with the PSE. The reproduction costs shall be shouldered by the requesting party regardless of whether he or she is broker firm or an ordinary person.

The PSE website is updated automatically as soon as a new disclosure or announcement has been received by the exchange.

Users will only need to log on to the local bourse’s website, www.pse.org.com to access company disclosures and memos. They will have the option to save into diskette only the disclosure of importance.

The SEC also approved PSE’s proposed fees for dividend listing applications, additional listing applications, and amendments to the primary and secondary purpose of listed issuers. – Zinnia dela Peña