XBRL US, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and SWIFT have joined forces to develop and establish a more streamlined process for corporate actions data by following a data standard combined with the XBRL technology standard.

A single corporate event such as a merger, stock split or dividend has a profound impact on all players in the securities processing and investment chain. Ultimately, it is critical to providing investors with the information they need to make decisions, where needed, and to ensure that shareholder portfolios are properly managed. Although a data standard (ISO 20022) is in widespread use today by custodians, stock markets, asset managers, clearing houses and others, that standard is not consistently applied and it is not used at all by the most important link in the chain — the issuer.

Once the issuer publishes a press release or a prospectus, multiple stakeholders access the data, translate it and take action based on their own interpretation of what the public company wants to convey which can result in time delays, inaccuracies and significant cost of processing.

XBRL US developed a prototype taxonomy for a merger action, incorporating it into our master digital dictionary that houses US GAAP, mutual fund risk/return summary and other data tags. XBRL US also hosted a conference on May 28, 2009 to kick off the intiative. Our joint recommendation with DTCC and SWIFT going forward is:

• Expand the content of the XBRL Corporate Action taxonomy to cover all the events processed in the U.S
• Continue to work within the ISO framework to expand the global ISO 20022 standard to cover U.S. specific data elements
• Develop the business case to present a complete view of the process chain and identify specific areas for improvement