Enough with the earnings: SEC may reduce company reports

NEW YORK (AP) — Four times a year there's a kind of parade on Wall Street: companies announce their quarterly earnings, all in a row, with the banks first, then the tech companies, and the retailers bringing up the rear.

For about 40 years, companies have had to make four yearly reports of basic financial information, including how much money they earned or lost, how much revenue they took in and what their expenses were.

BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink said in February that the constant reports encourage short-term thinking, and push companies to spend gobs of money on stock repurchases or big dividends, or repeatedly slashing costs instead of making longer-term investments that would help their business or the economy in the years to come.

Erik Gordon, professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, said companies may want to spend less on earnings filings, but even a change to semi-annual reports would be bad for many investors.

"When you cut down on required public disclosure, you favor institutional investors over individual investors," he said.