We read corporate disclosures pretty closely, but even then sometimes things get by us the first time. After all, securities lawyers have the entire toolbox of the English language, if they want, to make opaque any unpleasant news they have to disclose. So when it came to the 10-Q that Procter & Gamble …

Director resignation letters are so unusual in SEC filings — think of them as you would a rare white truffle — that when you actually come across one, it’s almost always worth paying attention to. Over the past year, we counted just 10 of these letters in the filings, despite the fact that director …

Back on November 21, AmeriGas Partners (APU) reported in the legal proceedings section of its 10-K that the Federal Trade Commission was investigating its propane-filling practices, and said the company “believes the investigation concerns, in whole or in part, the Partnership’s decision, in 2008, to reduce the volume of propane in the grill cylinders …

On November 10, Chevron (CVX) got some attention from the SEC [PDF] over disclosures in the 10-K it filed in February 2011, involving its business dealings in the Middle East. The agency was curious how extensively these dealings involved Sudan, Syria and Iran — countries that are on the U.S. State Department’s list of

Editors Note Added 2/6/2013: Given our track record in 2011 — 3 of the 10 companies on our list announced deals by April and a fourth one — Copano — just announced a deal last week, we wanted to provide some additional details on this list. That’s because none of the 10 …

With the end of the year upon on us, we thought we’d take a look back at 2011, both as a kind of quality control exercise, and to get a better sense of what works, what doesn’t and what can be improved. Longer term, we’re working on some more rigorous tracking mechanisms and a number [...]

We’re always on the lookout for fuzzy math — things that make a company’s numbers look better than they might otherwise seem. So when we came across several letters that the SEC had sent to McKesson (MCK) that raised questions over the company’s use of “adjusted earnings”, we decided to take a closer look. The [...]

In an 8-K filed after 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday, simulation-software maker Ansys Inc. (ANSS) disclosed in a quiet sort of way that its board of directors had, on December 14, “established a Strategy Committee …, formed to work closely with management and the Board to (i) develop and execute the Company’s long-term strategic …

Earlier this month, we worked with The New York Times to look more closely at the broad equity grants that Wall Street banks have been handing out to employees in recent years, beyond just the top executives. Although that front-page piece focused on a narrow slice of the financial sector, we’ve been noticing a …

Network-storage company NetApp (NTAP) filed its 10-Q yesterday afternoon, and with it disclosed some new problems with the U.S. Justice Department and the General Services Administration, which functions as the federal government’s landlord and central telecom and IT provider — and appears to be a significant end-customer for NetApp. We say “disclosed,” but really …