SEC Requires Hyperlinks to Exhibits

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) has adopted amendments to its rules and forms that will require companies filing registration statements and reports subject to the exhibit requirements of Item 601 of Regulation S-K to include an active hyperlink to each exhibit listed in the exhibit index, whether or not the exhibit is incorporated by reference. To facilitate the use of hyperlinks, subject to a small exception, the amendments also require companies to file such registration statements and reports on the SEC’s electronic filing system, EDGAR, in HyperText Markup Language (“HTML”) format.

The SEC also has proposed rule amendments that would require the use of the Inline eXtensible Business Reporting Language (“XBRL”) format for public companies and mutual funds that submit financial statement information and risk/return summaries using XBRL. The proposed amendments would also eliminate the current requirement for such filers to post XBRL data files on their websites.