The Inimitable Tiff

In short, after going to some lengths to hide a lot of information about its pact with Microsoft, Yahoo has gone to still more effort to disclose a smidgen of almost utterly meaningless additional information about it. This doesn’t seem to be at the SEC’s behest, because no staff comment letters are on file since July. (Though thanks to the SEC’s sometimes lengthy delays in disclosing comment letters, it’s possible that something more recent is awaiting disclosure.)

Companies get permission from the SEC to hide all kinds of things from investors, generally on the grounds that the information constitutes trade secrets, or that disclosure would hurt their competitiveness. We run into redacted material fairly often, and, much more rarely, see the SEC pushing back against corporate bids to keep stuff confidential. But as The Wall Street Journal’s Scott Thurm and Jean Eaglesham showed in a different context last week, it’s easy to forget just how much is kept under wraps.