IRRC Institute – Thursday, January 21, 2016
Risk factor disclosures provided by companies in their Form 10-K and other Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings are supposed to serve an important role in the capital markets by offering investors an understanding of the risks faced by the individual companies. Instead, we find in our review of the risk factor disclosures of 50 large companies that disclosures often are generic and do not provide clear, concise and insightful information. The disclosures typically are not tailored to the specific company. Instead, they tend to represent a listing of generic risks, with little to help investors distinguish between the relative importance of each risk to the company. In addition, the language is often repetitive and written with legal language and a compliance-oriented approach (instead of using plain English to help investors better understand and evaluate company-specific risks).