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About

fn_icon.jpgfootnoted.org was launched in August 2003 (here’s the very first post) to coincide with the publication of the book, Financial Fine Print. Each day, the site takes a closer look at the things that companies try to bury in their routine SEC filings. Some posts are simply quirky little factoids (like the fact that Warren Buffett’s son relies on ConAgra for his health insurance) while others tend to focus on more serious issues, like aggressive accounting, excessive compensation or the type of questionable self dealing that can often be indicative of more serious problems at a company.

By plowing through hundreds of filings a day (more during certain times of the year) and delivering original insight and analysis, footnoted.org has become a must read for professional money managers and analysts, as well as sophisticated individual investors and even a few journalists who often have very nice things to say about the site. Here are a few examples:

Video/Audio:

Editor/Founder:

Michelle LederMichelle Leder first became interested in SEC filings early in her career, while writing about a small Florida bank that was engaged in aggressive accounting during the last real estate boom. As a reporter, and later editor, she spent 10 years at daily newspapers in Florida, Connecticut and New York. As a freelance business journalist, her work has appeared in BusinessWeek, The New York Times, Portfolio and Slate, among others. Leder has appeared on Bloomberg TV, CNBC, the Today Show and has been quoted in dozens of newspapers both in the US and abroad, about digging into SEC filings. She blogs from footnoted.org world headquarters in Peekskill, NY, where she lives with her husband, Scott, and dog, Kumara, whom she has trained to dig through SEC filings.

Contributing Editor:

wendy_web.jpgWendy Fried, founder of the Proxyland blog, will be contributing to Footnoted.org on a regular basis. After graduating from a fancypants law school in a small blue state, she practiced corporate and securities law and later worked on regulatory policy issues at a Wall Street trade association. She writes and blogs about legal and business topics (and more frivolous subjects when the mood strikes her). Her work has appeared, among other places, in Inc. Magazine and on Law.com. She lives in NYC with her two children and a dog who, unlike Michelle’s, is a terrier and prefers working for himself. She can be reached at wendy (at) footnoted.org.

Senior Advisor:

Thornton “Ted” Oglove is the author of the book, Quality of Earnings, which was first published in 1987 and was based on the ground-breaking Wall Street research report that Oglove co-authored with Robert Olstein in the late 1960s and 1970s. Oglove, who continues to work as a consultant, lives with his wife, Susan, in San Francisco.

Interns:

image_1.jpgAmy Bao is a junior at the University of Michigan who is studying Business and Asian Studies. Amy enjoys drawing, painting, and gallery hopping in her free time. The last time she was in the Chelsea Art District, it took her over 6 hours to get through only half a block of galleries.

Rohan Poojara was introduced to the world of finance and stock markets by his father, while he was still in middle school. He moved from Mumbai, an Indian coastal town with a population of 20 million, to attend Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA, a booming metropolis with close to 10,000 inhabitants. He is a senior who is double majoring in Business Administration and Economics.

Design:

Jonathan Tessler, founder and creative director of The Complex, designed Footnoted.org’s new site.

David Martin of NolaFlash.com implemented the new design as a Word Press template and hacked PHP for the new site.

Site Maintenance:

Chris PoteetChris Poteet of Siolon is a web application developer based in Dayton, Ohio, who’s also a WordPress maven but enjoys the occassional trip outside the office to see other humans.