SEC tells PSE to post financial statements of listed firms in its website

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has directed the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) to post in its website its financial statements as well as those of other listed corporations to ensure transparency.

SEC chairman Lilia R. Bautista said financial statements of broker-dealers should also be posted in the PSE’s website to enable the public to determine the financial soundness of brokerage houses.

"A lot of foreign investors would like to take a look at the financial statements of listed companies. So we really think that the PSE should post the income statements of listed companies to provide better service to the investing public," Bautista said.

The PSE, in fact, is already allowing publicly-listed corporations to submit their financial reports via the Internet. This is intended to do away with most of the paper submission and to lessen the exhange’s and the firms‚ cost in disseminating information to investors and broker firms.

In lieu of the current practice of submitting hard copies, listed firms may now submit an electronic version of their financial reports.

The PSE requires listed firms to submit two hard copies for any amendments to their financial reports for its filing purpose. Upon receipt of any amendments, the exchange would post a notice containing a summary of the amendments to all brokers via the Maktrade system.

In order to prevent discrepancies between the hard copies and the electronic form, the SEC is requiring each firm’s corporate secretary to certify that the contents of the submitted diskette are the same as the printed one.

If possible, the SEC also wants the PSE to work towards using digitized signature for the soft copy and at the same time work for the electronic submission via online instead of the submission of the diskette.

The SEC will require the PSE to submit an outline of the step-by-step procedures in uploading the financial reports to the appropriate electronic site. This will ensure that safeguards are instituted so that the contents of the officially submitted data will be similar to the uploaded version.

The PSE said the new disclosure system will be more beneficial to the investors since it will allow them to view the information at the same time as the trading participants.

The move is in line with the PSE’s online system which allows the public to view all company disclosures and other PSE announcements through the internet.

The online list is updated automatically as soon as a new disclosure or announcement has been received and entered into the system.

The system allows users to select a particular disclosure for viewing. Users have the option to print or save into diskettes only the documents that are of importance to them.

Meanwhile, the SEC has opened for public bidding the second phase of its computerization project, dubbed I-Report. The service will allow the public to view the financial statements of all companies registered with the SEC for a fee.

The service is expected to be available by the second half of the year or early next year. It is part of SEC’s hardline efforts to provide quicker, better and more efficient services and promote the Philippines as a base for globally competitive operations.

With this new service, the public will have access to general information sheets, audited financial statements and other periodic reports filed with the Commission by logging on to the SECˆs website,sec.org.ph.

In 2002, the SEC launched its online registry system, dubbed as I-Register, which allows the public to verify and register their business name with the corporate watchdog via the Internet anytime and anywhere.

The corporate registry system allows remote submission of company registration applications. It is envisioned to reduce the volume of applications received and manually processed by the company registration and monitoring department, allowing more time to be invested in the assessment, evaluation and monitoring functions of the staff.

The verification function, on the other hand, automatically displays similar names that have been reserved and registered or globally and internationally recognized names that can no longer be unduly misappropriated.