Footnoted.org, an investor Web site that highlights what its editor, Michelle Leder, calls "the things companies bury in their routine SEC filings," has just passed its five-year mark. BusinessWeek's Nanette Byrnes talked to Leder about what has changed and what hasn't in a half-decade's worth of documents. Has disclosure improved since you started in 2003? There's a much greater level of detail, partly because of Sarbanes-Oxleyand activist shareholders. Quarterly reports are now as big as l0Ks-the annual reports-used to be. l0Ks are like War and Peace. And while the biggest companies are filing more readable documents, others are being dragged kicking and screaming into plain English.
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