SEC faces scrutiny over email mix-up that may have swallowed public comments on semiannual reporting rule

The SEC proposed letting public companies ditch quarterly earnings reports in favor of filing just twice a year. Then it gave the public the wrong email address to complain about it.

The agency’s May 5 proposal directed commenters to send feedback to [email protected]. The problem: the SEC’s own standard instructions page, printed on nearly every rule proposal since at least 2019, lists [email protected]. Note the plural. One missing “s” may have quietly eaten an unknown number of public comments before anyone noticed.

A typo with regulatory consequences

The semiannual reporting proposal is one of the most consequential changes to corporate disclosure requirements in decades. It would allow publicly listed companies to replace their three mandatory quarterly Form 10-Q filings with a single new Form 10-S, filed alongside the standard annual Form 10-K.

The SEC published the proposal in the Federal Register on May 7, setting a comment deadline of July 6. As of July 10, the agency had received roughly 23,786 comment letters, a volume that signals just how much the market cares about this one.