Fair or foul

The SEC's new regulation, dubbed 'FD' for Fair Disclosure, has been controversial from the start, pitting corporate issuers against small investors – or at least that's the way the SEC has portrayed it. At the heart of the issue is the SEC's claim, championed by chairman Arthur Levitt, that favoritism can taint the corporate disclosure process for financial information, giving an unfair advantage to Wall Street professionals and leaving out individual investors. The SEC maintains a company's