On March 1, 2017, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) voted to approve final rules that will require public companies that file registration statements and reports subject to the exhibit requirements under Item 601 of Regulation S-K, or that file Forms F-10 or 20-F, to include a hyperlink to each exhibit listed in the exhibit index of these filings. To enable the inclusion of such hyperlinks, the new rules also require that registrants submit all such filings in HyperText Markup Language (“HTML”) format. The new rules are effective for filings submitted on or after September 1, 2017. A registrant that is a “smaller reporting company,” or that is neither a “large accelerated filer” nor an “accelerated filer,” and that currently submits filings in ASCII format, does not need to comply with the new rules until September 1, 2018. Retailers affected by the new rules should be prepared to make the required hyperlinks available in exhibit indices to SEC filings.
Read the full text of the SEC’s new rules.