A law firm has submitted a rule making petition to the SEC to amend the rule governing the conflict minerals disclosure on Form SD to permit, for a temporary period, an alternative disclosure. The petition states “based upon our experience over a broad range of registrants in a cross-section of industries, at this point in time we are unaware of any registrant with a significant number of products that include conflict minerals that has the ability to comply completely with the conflict minerals rules.”
The alternative disclosure and proposed rule changes are:
- A one-year deferral for filing Form SD would be available to any registrant that, commencing with its first Exchange Act periodic report due on or after October 1, 2013, provides in that and subsequent periodic reports until it first files a report on Form SD, detailed status reports on the actions taken to-date and currently anticipated to be taken in order to yield compliance.
- A two-year deferral would be available with respect to coverage of foreign operations where the registrant complies with the requirements for the one-year deferral and thereafter continues to provide detailed status reports on foreign implementation consistent in scope with the status reports filed during the first year. For clarity, foreign implementation would not need to be covered in the status reports during the first year.
- The status reports would be furnished under Exhibit 99.
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