In a departure from tradition, Sun Microsystems plans to release price-sensitive corporate news on the Internet minutes ahead of other traditional news dissemination outlets.
The decision follows conversations the company has had with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, and is designed to give regular investors equal access to information on PCs and mobile devices as institutions with access to subscription services such as BusinessWire, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz said on his blog this week.
When Sun reports its fiscal fourth-quarter financial results on Monday, July 30th, it will be available first on its corporate investor relations Web site and through RSS feeds. It will be available to third-party news services 10 minutes later.
From Schwartz’s blog:
“It may not seem like it, but this is a sea change in how Sun communicates with the world - and sets a path for other public companies seeking to drive greater transparency. I wonder how far off we are from ceasing to issue traditional press releases altogether… after all, no news agency could possibly suggest they reach a greater portion of the planet than the internet.”
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It’s hard to see what difference this will make. How many retail investors do you know who can react to a press release in the sub-hundred millisecond range that the latest analysis-and-programmed-trade systems can?
- Posted by Ian KemmishSchwartz seems to be ignorant of who the wire services reach in this day and age. They are not ONLY available to financial institutions with subscriptions. Sun’s own releases on PR Newswire are instantly accessible to users on Yahoo! Finance, Google, AOL (and MANY more) and any user that signs up for the wire’s free RSS feed or email delivery (and both wires have that). Rather than give “regular investors equal access to information on PCs and mobile devices” (access which they already HAVE), he’s actually taking away instant access from this audience by making them get the information from the Sun site directly (or wait for 10 minutes). Again, he’s either woefully ignorant about how these things work…or he’s being deliberatly disingenuous in order to save some $$$ from his wire service.
- Posted by JoelSun Spots: Blinded by the Light.
The evidence suggests that Sun’s high-profile experiment had decidedly mixed results; in Business Wire’s view, it was clearly not the great leap forward that Schwartz had touted for months on his blog. We got “Page Not Found” messages when trying to access Sun’s release on their blog for six minutes. That’s an eternity in the world of financial markets. With commercial news wires, everyone has equal, unrestricted access to material news announcements. The playing field is indeed level. Further, Business Wire’s presence on the internet, in conjunction with its myriad distribution channels, far eclipses any individual company’s web posting. And yes, we even offer RSS feeds at no charge.
Our full post on this issue is at http://businesswired.wordpress.com/
- Posted by Tom Becktold-Tom Becktold, Business Wire