News of possible interest: (General Electric to pa
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“Investors are entitled to an accurate picture of a company’s material operating results,” said Stephanie Avakian, Director of the Division of Enforcement. “GE’s repeated disclosure failures across multiple businesses materially misled investors about how it was generating reported earnings and cash growth as well as latent risks in its insurance business.”
“Public companies must take great care to follow disclosure laws for the benefit of their investors,” said John T. Dugan, Associate Director of Enforcement in the SEC’s Boston Regional Office. “Companies like GE, with complexities such as interdivisional transactions and reliance on estimates of future costs and revenues, must ensure that the information they provide to investors is not misleading.”
The SEC’s order finds that GE violated the antifraud, reporting, disclosure controls, and accounting controls provisions of the securities laws. Without admitting or denying the order’s findings, GE agreed to cease and desist from future violations of the charged provisions, pay a $200 million penalty, and report for a one-year period to the SEC regarding certain accounting and disclosure controls in its insurance and power businesses.