On August 10, 2012, the President signed into law the Iran Threat Reduction and Syria Human Rights Act of 2012. Section 219 of the Act amends Section 13 of the Exchange Act to add new subsection (r), which requires an issuer that files Exchange Act periodic reports to provide disclosure in its periodic report if during the reporting period it or any of its affiliates has knowingly engaged in certain specified activities involving contacts with or support for Iran or other identified persons involved in terrorism or the creation of weapons of mass destruction.

Section 13(r) also requires an issuer that includes a description of an identified activity in a periodic report to concurrently file with the Commission a notice that identifies the issuer and indicates that disclosure of the activity has been included in its periodic report. We are in the process of modifying EDGAR to accommodate the filing of these notices. Issuers required to file the notice should prepare a separate document that includes the information required by the statute, convert it to ASCII or HTML as instructed by the EDGAR Filer Manual, and submit it using a new EDGAR form type called IRANNOTICE. EDGAR will receive and disseminate these notices in the same way it does the concurrently filed annual or quarterly reports. The notices will appear with the issuer's filing history on EDGAR and will be searchable through that system.

We expect the new EDGAR form type to be available for use with the implementation of EDGAR Release 13.0 on January 14, 2013.

December 19, 2012