Securities and Exchange Commission December 23, 2010 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Securities and Exchange Commission is requesting public comment to help inform its study pursuant to Section 939(h) of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 on the feasibility and desirability of: Standardizing credit ratings terminology, so that all credit rating agencies issue credit ratings using identical terms; standardizing the market stress conditions under which ratings are evaluated; requiring a quantitative correspondence between credit ratings and a range of default probabilities and loss expectations under standardized conditions of economic stress; and standardizing credit rating terminology across asset classes, so that named ratings correspond to a standard range of default probabilities and expected losses independent of asset class and issuing entity.

We are proposing changes to the annual reporting requirements of issuers that file reports pursuant to Sections 13(a) or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to implement Section 1502 of the Dodd- Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The proposed rules would require any issuer for which conflict minerals are necessary to the functionality or production of a product manufactured, or contracted to be manufactured, by that issuer to disclose in the body of its annual report whether its conflict minerals originated in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or an adjoining country. If so, that issuer would be required to furnish a separate report as an exhibit to its annual report that includes, among other matters, a description of the measures taken by the issuer to exercise due diligence on the source and chain of custody of its conflict minerals. These due diligence measures would include, but would not be limited to, an independent private sector audit of the issuer's report conducted in accordance with standards established by the Comptroller General of the United States. Further, any issuer furnishing such a report would be required, in that report, to certify that it obtained an independent private sector audit of its report, provide the audit report, and make its reports available to the public on its Internet Web site.