15 U.S.C. § 80a–29 — Reports and financial statements of investment companies and affiliated persons

(a) Every registered investment company must file annual reports with the SEC — the same information, documents, and reports that companies with securities listed on a national securities exchange must file each year under section 13(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, following that section's rules and regulations. (b) Every registered investment company must also file with the SEC: (1) whatever information, documents, and reports, other than financial statements, the SEC requires to keep the information in the company's registration statement reasonably current; and (2) copies of every periodic or interim report, or similar communication containing financial statements, that the company sends to any class of its security holders — filed no later than ten days after it's sent. Information filed under paragraph (2) may be incorporated by reference into a report later, or at the same time, filed under paragraph (1). (c) The SEC must act, consistent with the public interest and investor protection, to avoid unnecessary reporting and minimize the compliance burden on registered investment companies and their affiliated persons, both when exercising its authority under subsection (f), and under subsection (b)(1) if it ever requires filings more often than every six months. In taking that action, the SEC must consider, and ask for public comment on: (A) workable alternatives that would minimize the reporting burden on registered investment companies; and (B) how useful the required information, documents, and reports actually are to the SEC, weighed against what they cost registered investment companies and their affiliated persons to produce. (d) The SEC must issue rules letting a registered investment company file, with the SEC and with any national securities exchange involved, copies (or extracts) of the periodic reports it files under subsections (a) and (b), in place of the reports and documents otherwise required of it under section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. (e) At least twice a year, every registered investment company must send its stockholders reports containing whichever of the following information and financial statements, or their equivalent, as of a reasonably current date, the SEC prescribes by rule to protect investors — and these reports cannot be misleading in any material way in light of what the company has already filed under subsections (a) and (b): (1) a balance sheet, together with a statement of the total value of the company's investments as of that balance sheet's date; (2) a list showing the amounts and values of securities the company owned on that date; (3) an income statement for the reporting period, itemized for at least every category of income or expense that makes up more than 5 percent of total income or expense; (4) a surplus statement, itemized for at least every charge or credit to the surplus account that makes up more than 5 percent of total surplus charges or credits during the period; (5) a statement of the company's total pay during the period, covering (A) all directors and advisory board members' regular pay; (B) each individual director's and each individual advisory board member's special pay; (C) all officers as a group; and (D) each person who employs an officer or director as that officer's or director's "affiliated person"; and (6) the total dollar amount of the company's purchases and sales of investment securities, other than government securities, during the period. If the SEC decides that a required item doesn't fit, or is inappropriate for, a particular type of investment company, it may by rule allow a comparable substitute item instead. (f) The SEC may, by rule, require that these semiannual reports include other information beyond what subsection (e) lists, whenever the SEC deems it necessary or appropriate in the public interest or for investor protection. (g) If the SEC's rules require it, the financial statements in the annual reports required under subsections (a) and (e) must come with a certificate from independent public accountants. That certificate must rest on an audit at least as thorough, in scope and procedure, as the audit independent public accountants would ordinarily perform to produce comprehensive and reliable financial statements, and it must include whatever the SEC's rules require about the audit's nature and scope and the accountants' findings and opinion. Each such report must also state that the independent public accountants verified the securities the company owns — either by examining them directly, or by obtaining a certificate from the custodian holding them, as the SEC's rules prescribe. (h) Anyone who directly or indirectly beneficially owns more than 10 percent of any class of outstanding securities (other than short-term paper) issued by a registered closed-end company, or who is an officer, director, advisory board member, investment adviser, or affiliated person of an investment adviser of such a company, is subject, for their transactions in that company's securities (other than short-term paper), to the same duties and liabilities that section 16 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 imposes on certain beneficial owners, directors, and officers for their transactions in certain equity securities. (i) A person who maintains a church plan that is excluded from the definition of "investment company" only because of section 80a-3(c)(14) must give plan participants written disclosure, at least once a year, and — for anyone joining the plan after May 31, 1996 — as soon as practical after joining, stating that: (1) the plan, and any company or account used to manage or hold plan assets and interests in it, is not subject to registration, regulation, or reporting under this subchapter, the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, or state securities laws; and (2) plan participants and beneficiaries therefore will not get the protections those laws provide. (j) The SEC may issue rules requiring a person who maintains such a church plan to file a notice with the SEC, containing whatever information, and in whatever form, the SEC prescribes as necessary or appropriate in the public interest or consistent with investor protection. (k) (1) The SEC must, by rule, adopt data standards for every report required to be filed with it under this section, though it may exempt exhibits, signatures, and certifications from those standards. (2) These data standards must incorporate, and be compatible with (to the extent feasible), all applicable data standards established in the rules issued under section 5334 of title 12 — including, to the extent practical, the characteristics described in clauses (i) through (vi) of section 5334(c)(1)(B).