September 16, 2004
In general, I support your proposal to postpone the final phase-in of the accelerated filing deadlines. However, the larger issue to me is the ridiculously low threshold of 75 million in public market cap that you have used as the criterion for accelerated filing status. This should only impact large corporations with the systems, expertise and staffing available to prepare a high quality 10-K within a 60 day timeframe. Many companies in the micro-cap arena, defined as anything below 500 million in market cap by most investment bankers, do not have the systems or personnel in place to prepare and file a 10-K in 60 days, or a 10-Q in 35 days. All this does is create additional opportunity for errors and shoddy MDA reporting due to the time crunch.
I believe the accelerated filing status should be reserved for companies with a public market cap in excess of 250 million. This rule and many other recent rule changes are making it impossible for micro-cap companies to continue to be publicly-traded, which would not be in the best interests of the investing public. Please reconsider this.