On March 1, in an effort to provide investors with easier access to exhibits to registration statements and periodic reports that are incorporated by reference from earlier filings, the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted rule and form amendments that require issuers to include hyperlinks to the originally filed exhibits. This requirement will apply to filings for which exhibits are required under Item 601 of Regulation S-K, as well as Forms F-10 and 20-F, but excludes exhibits that are filed with Form ABS-EE (related to asset-backed securities) and exhibits filed in XBRL (a machine readable data format that permits investors to more easily access, evaluate and compare financial information both across reporting periods for the same issuer and among different companies). To facilitate the inclusion of such hyperlinks, registrants will also be required to file registration statements and reports in HTML format. These rule and form amendments become effective on September 1, 2017, except that non-accelerated filers and smaller reporting companies that submit filings in ASCII format have until September 1, 2018 to comply.

The press release is available here, and the adopting release is available here.