EDGAReView

When EDGAR Online and UBmatrix officially merge, the winners are everyone and anyone who deals with business data – whether they create it, report it, or analyze it. At least that’s how we saw it, when we made the decision to combine the two companies and create a global giant in the financial information industry, offering one-stop access to superior business data, software, and reporting services. Here’s the story behind the story.

Both companies pioneered the XBRL data standard now used by stock exchanges, banking authorities and tax agencies around the world. Accountant Charles Hoffman, of UBmatrix, started the ball rolling ten years ago when he saw the potential for XML technology to turn a financial report into information that could easily be shared amongst application. Up to the minute data could be shared online by all the various departments in a company without any cutting and pasting: a revolutionary concept. It was around the same time EDGAR Online had realized the internet could be used for fast delivery of value-added data from the public company reports being filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

It was also the time of the Enron scandal and a public cry for greater detail and transparency in company reporting. XBRL, an XML-based language specific to business data, seemed to offer the solution.

Hoffman and EDGAR Online were among the small group of idealists that formed the not-for-profit volunteer effort to make XBRL a reality. It’s been a long, slow, international effort, but XBRL is today the global standard in business reporting, and mandated by the SEC. (For the full history of how and why XBRL was developed, here’s an article published by the AICPA’s Accountancy Journal, based on Hoffman’s 10-year chronicle.)

As the two companies evolved, EDGAR Online continued to focus on the analyst community, who wanted comprehensive, detailed information, while UBmatrix focused on the needs of corporate financial reporting teams and regulators. But the needs of the two groups overlap. A financial professional can be just as concerned about creating reports or regulating reports as they are about having access to comprehensive data and about analyzing it.

So the companies are extremely complimentary in what they offer to the financial world, including any company that must report to the SEC, governmental regulators, and analysts of all sizes and levels of sophistication.

Another way the companies mesh is that EDGAR Online offers services for corporations preparing XBRL translations of their financial reports for SEC filing, while UBmatrix offers software to enterprise application vendors who are developing exciting new applications to create, consume and leverage the growing availability of interactive data.

Here’s the official press release on the merger (following shareholder approval): EDGAR Online and UBmatrix Merge, Creating Global XBRL Leader.