Where the Evidence Lives
For a listed company in the United States, the anchor is Item 5.02 of Form 8-K: required, dated, lawyered, and impossible to edit quietly afterwards. The proxy statement confirms who held which role at a point in time, and a Form 3 confirms that someone has become an insider. Everything else, from leadership pages to professional profiles, is a lead to be checked. Faraday's read is that most mistakes here are record-keeping mistakes rather than analytical ones: an unconfirmed move treated as fact, or an announcement date confused with an effective date. Keep the dates separate, climb the verification ladder, and read the filing when its tone differs from the press release.
Knowledge check
A company decides on a new chief financial officer in May but files its Form 8-K in July, the day it issues a press release announcing her. Has it necessarily broken the four-business-day rule?
Show the answer
No. The instruction to Item 5.02 allows a company that plans to announce an officer appointment by other means, such as a press release, to delay the Form 8-K until the day of that public announcement. The filing date therefore marks when the move became public, not when it was decided.