XBRL Helps Meet Market Needs in Fair Disclosure RuleCommunications.

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 1, 2000

Starting last week, U.S. public companies will be required to comply with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's new Fair Disclosure Rule (Regulation FD).

The new rule, which became effective on October

23, is part of the agency's efforts to level the playing field for all investors by requiring companies to fully disclose material data and relevant information that may influence decisions to all investors at the same time, not just selectively to analysts and insiders before events occur.

Mike Willis, Partner with PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Louis Matherne, Director of Information Technology at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), who together serve as co-chairs of the XBRL Strategy Work Group, are available to talk with you about a revolutionary software language called XBRL (Extensible Business Reporting Language) being developed by 70 of the world's largest accounting, technology and financial services companies to help public companies communicate with their stakeholders more efficiently and on a more timely basis. We believe that XBRL will facilitate compliance with the new SEC regulation while also providing information to the stakeholders in a significantly more useful format.

XBRL is an XML-based, freely available software language that provides an Internet platform for distributing company information. Using "bar codes" understood by the accounting, technology and financial service sectors, specific line items on a business report are tagged with XBRL. Analysts, investors, accountants and finance teams within companies can now quickly prepare, distribute and review data for better investment and management decisions. Under the new Fair Disclosure regulation, all parties involved in the business reporting chain will now have equal access and better comprehension of the information contained within business reports taking advantage of this faster, cheaper and better process to disclose information using the power of the Internet. All a public company needs to do is put its business reports and financial statements into the XBRL format and post them to its Web site.

Mike Willis and Louis Matherne are prepared to talk about how XBRL will:

- Allow universal review and analysis of business reports and financial statements and allow companies to quickly and more efficiently prepare and distribute information to all shareholder audiences on an equal basis using the power of the Internet

- Leverage the agreement of more than 70 of the world's leading technology, accounting and financial service companies which are behind XBRL and what it will mean for companies using it in their business reporting processes

- Empower investors and help analysts to conduct their analysis quickly for more timely investment decisions

- Create a pipeline for automatically distributing personalized financial information to all parties at once.

- Make complying with "Full and Fair Disclosure" the start of a more satisfying investor relations program for all involved parties.

Please feel free to call me at (212) 973-9828 if you would like to schedule an interview with Mike Willis or Louis Matherne to talk about XBRL and how it will help companies comply with the new Regulation FD.

Please review www.xbrl.org for additional background information.