The Financial Services Agency (FSA) today launched new EDINET (Electronic Disclosure for Investors' NETwork) system.
EDINET is an electronic corporate disclosure system under the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, and all listed or major fund-raising companies and investment funds in Japan are required to file their disclosure documents using the system. The corporate disclosure documents submitted by these entities are publicly available on the Internet through EDINET. All filers are, in principle, mandated to submit in XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) format the financial statements included in their Annual Securities Reports, Semiannual Securities Reports, Quarterly Securities Reports and Securities Registration Statements for fiscal years starting in or after April 2008.
Quarterly Securities Reports for the first fiscal quarter ending June 2008 will be the first filing in XBRL format. XBRL will facilitate investors to utilize the financial information in an advanced manner through directly downloading the financial information, and processing and analyzing downloaded data with their computers. In new EDINET, the financial information of approximately 5,000 companies and 3,000 investment funds is to be filed and available for public in XBRL format through EDINET. It is one of the most advanced XBRL-adopted electronic disclosure systems in the world.
The financial statements in XBRL format are to be prepared using "EDINET Taxonomy" (Japanese GAAP taxonomy), the final version of which was published in February 8, 2008. ( http://www.fsa.go.jp/singi/edinet/20080208/06.zip http://www.fsa.go.jp/singi/edinet/20080208/06.zip )
FSA continuously advances its efforts in relation to XBRL through various activities such as collaborative work aimed at achieving multinational interoperability together with IASCF (International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation) and US SEC (United States Securities and Exchange Commission).
