XBRL Corporate Actions Data Tags Released to Public

XBRL US Labs, the research and development arm of XBRL US, announced on September 30, 2010 that it has completed the initial draft of a taxonomy, or digital dictionary of terms, to define corporate actions event information, and made it available for public review and comment. Developed by a team led by XBRL US' Chief Standards Officer Campbell Pryde, and XBRL Labs Research Fellow L.A. Orloff, a product manager with The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the XBRL tags are based on elements of the ISO 20022 corporate actions global standard and were developed as part of an Issuer-to-Investor: Corporate Actions initiative, a cooperative industry effort sponsored by DTCC, SWIFT and XBRL US Labs.


The initiative was formally kicked off at a May 2009 conference of industry leaders, at which project partners DTCC, SWIFT, and XBRL US outlined the program and set a goal of improving transparency and communication between issuers and investors for greater accuracy, reduced risks and lower costs. Early milestones have included a business case developed with a multi-industry stakeholder group, a taxonomy preview by XBRL US members, and a pilot program to measure shareholder benefits of XBRL-tagged corporate actions involving major financial institutions who process and deliver corporate actions announcements, such as Citi, who, with DTCC, will test-run XBRL-tagged dividend announcements to evaluate data quality and consistency, as well as the flexibility XBRL offers in the form of country- and company-specific extensions to the common core taxonomy.


"Using XBRL to tag corporate actions documents will bring benefits to issuers, investors and intermediaries," said Donald F. Donahue, DTCC Chairman and CEO. "This taxonomy was designed to make it as simple as possible for issuers to tag documents in XBRL, with increased confidence that shareholders will receive better quality data, in less time, and at less cost."


The taxonomy takes advantage of the ISO 20022 corporate actions standard to provide a better user experience with multiple views and entry points into corporate actions data, using software tools that take advantage of the ISO and XBRL standards to view a simplified, filtered set of relevant dictionary terms for a given type of corporate action.

"XBRL is an important tool that leverages the ISO 20022 standard to improve the communication between issuers and investors, which ultimately reduces costs and risks as well as increases transparency," said Chris Church, Chief Executive, Americas, SWIFT, "The availability of the XBRL corporate actions taxonomy is a significant milestone that brings us one step closer to solving an age old problem that has plagued the industry for years."