Commentary on the SEC's Proposed Reporting Threshold for Institutional Investment Managers

Abstract

We comment on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed Reporting Threshold for Institutional Investment Managers (“Proposal”). We estimate the cost savings from the Proposal are economically small, and amount to 0.004% (0.008%) of assets under management for the average (median) affected filer, and 0.02% of assets for the smallest filer. This small cost savings needs to be weighed against the potentially large costs to investors and others created by eliminating a public disclosure that they heavily use. We believe the analysis in Section II of the Proposal is incomplete for two reasons. First, the Proposal does not contain any formal economic analysis. Second, it does not attempt to quantify either the extent of use of Form 13F or the benefits that it provides to investors and other stakeholders. To help fill this void, we analyze the usage patterns of the EDGAR system, and specifically the frequency of Form 13F downloads from EDGAR. Our analysis suggests the investing public and other stakeholders are strongly interested in the information in Form 13F filings, particularly those of affected filers, and that exempting such institutions from filing Form 13F would deprive the market of this information.