The SEC's transparency rule at issue was designed to build on voluntary initiatives by mandating disclosure of payments to foreign governments made by companies in so-called "extractive industries" whose shares trade on U.S. exchanges.
Though controversial, the law's congressional sponsors said it would help citizens hold resource-rich governments accountable for their management of resource revenues.
The business groups that brought the lawsuit had asked the SEC to confidentially collect the information and release it only on an aggregate, by-country basis, to protect individual companies.
In their lawsuit, they said such a model was consistent with the statute. On Wednesday, the SEC said the law shows Congress intended for public disclosure of each company's individual information.
No comments:
Post a Comment