NEW YORK: Business Wire will license XBRL financial data from EDGAR Online, making it the first of the major newswires to include XBRL content from the service on its website.
XBRL, or extensible business reporting language, tags individual pieces of financial information, making it easier for financial journalists and analysts to compare stats from company reports.
"We really want to show everybody out there the power of XBRL and the next generation of financial reporting," said Michael Becker, manager, global disclosure and financial reporting for Business Wire.
While Becker admitted that there was not much of a demand for XBRL from Business Wire users, he said that this development is keeping in line with the SCC and FDIC, which are both moving forward with XBRL initiatives. "We wanted to introduce this data early," he added.
Licensing XBRL is the first step in a major initiative by Business Wire to incorporate the language into its offerings, Becker said. Eventually, the wire hopes to disseminate press releases containing XBRL-tagged information.
Competitor PR Newswire gets financial information for its website through a partnership with Financial Content. Although the wire is working to educate the market about XBRL, Michelle Horowitz, VP of content, said the company does not see a need to include XBRL information on its website at this time.
