The Form 20FR12B Files Dataset is a collection of EDGAR registration statements filed by foreign private issuers to register a class of equity or debt securities under Section 12(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 — the filing a non-U.S. issuer lodges at the moment it first lists a class of securities on a U.S. national securities exchange such as NYSE or Nasdaq. One record represents a single EDGAR accession — either an initial 20FR12B registration or a subsequent 20FR12B/A amendment — packaged as an accession-level folder containing a JSON manifest and every non-image document from the original submission (the 20-F-style registration-statement body plus its full exhibit train). Records are grouped into monthly ZIP archives. The dataset begins in May 1996, reflecting the phase-in of mandatory electronic filing for foreign private issuers on EDGAR, and extends to the present. File payloads are delivered as TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF inside the ZIP containers.
Programmatically retrieve the full list of dataset archive files, download URLs and dataset metadata.
Dataset Index JSON API
Download the entire dataset as a single archive file.
Download Entire Dataset:
Download a single container file (e.g. monthly archive) from the dataset.
Download Single Container:
The dataset captures the comprehensive initial disclosure package a foreign private issuer produces when entering the U.S. exchange-listed reporting universe. Each record bundles the primary 20-F-style registration-statement body together with its exhibits (articles and bylaws, deposit agreements, indentures, material contracts, subsidiary lists, auditor consents, and related items), travelling together because they were filed together as a single filing event on EDGAR. Initial 20FR12B filings and 20FR12B/A amendments are each their own accession and therefore each their own record. Amendments share the same internal structure as the initial registration; the formType field on the manifest is the definitive discriminator.
Records are grouped into monthly ZIP archives under the path pattern <YYYY>/<YYYY>-<MM>.zip. Each ZIP expands into a month-level folder containing one sub-folder per accession, named with the 18-digit dash-stripped accession number. There is no top-level index file inside the ZIP — the directory tree itself is the index, and enumeration is performed by walking the per-accession metadata.json files. Reconstructing the full amendment chain for a given issuer requires joining records by filer CIK and Commission file number from the entities[] block, because amendment accessions are distributed across the months in which they were filed.
Form 20FR12B's disclosure content is essentially identical in scope to a Form 20-F annual report: the issuer must present comprehensive disclosure about business history and operations, risk factors, financial condition and results of operations, corporate governance and senior management, principal shareholders, related-party transactions, and the full exhibit roster supporting the registration. The form is typically filed once when a foreign issuer first lists on a U.S. exchange. The amendment variant 20FR12B/A supplements or corrects an earlier filing, most often in response to staff comments or updated information.
Inside one accession folder, content is organized in two conceptual layers.
The first layer is the manifest — exactly one metadata.json — a flat JSON object that mirrors the EDGAR filing header and catalogs every document in the original submission, including the image files that were stripped before packaging. This file is the authoritative index for the filing.
The second layer is the set of filing documents, one file per non-image document in the submission: the primary 20FR12B registration-statement body and its exhibits. Each textual document on disk is not a bare HTML file but an SGML-wrapped fragment in the EDGAR submission style, with a small <DOCUMENT> header declaring role, sequence, filename, and description, followed by the actual payload inside a <TEXT> block. The SGML wrapper is always present and must be stripped before any standard HTML parser can consume the payload.
File naming uses the filer's own EDGAR-uploaded names with no dataset-side normalization. Names typically embed an internal document code, an exhibit tag, and a short issuer slug (for example ea024963001ex2-3_brbibr.htm).
metadata.json manifestThe manifest is a flat object. Intentional fields and their roles:
| Field | Purpose |
|---|---|
formType | "20FR12B" or "20FR12B/A". |
accessionNo | Dashed EDGAR accession (e.g. 0001213900-25-066110). |
filedAt | Filing timestamp with timezone offset (ISO-8601). |
description | Human-readable form description (e.g. "Form 20FR12B - Registration of securities [Section 12(b)]"). |
linkToFilingDetails | URL of the primary document on SEC.gov. |
linkToTxt | URL of the complete SGML submission text file. |
linkToHtml | URL of the EDGAR filing index page. |
linkToXbrl | URL of an XBRL instance when present; commonly empty for this form. |
id | Stable internal record identifier. |
documentFormatFiles | Array with one entry per document in the EDGAR submission (see below). |
dataFiles | Array for structured-data files; typically empty for this form. |
entities | Array of filer and subject-company records with identifying attributes. |
seriesAndClassesContractsInformation | Fund series/class metadata; not used by this form and typically empty. |
documentFormatFiles[]Each entry carries sequence (the 1-based position of the document in the SGML submission), size in bytes represented as a string, documentUrl pointing back to EDGAR (not into the ZIP), description, and type. The type field identifies the document's role: 20FR12B for the registration-statement body; EX-1.x, EX-2.x, EX-4.x, EX-8.x, EX-10.x, EX-15.x and similar for exhibits; and GRAPHIC for embedded images. A final array entry typically has blank sequence and type and represents the full .txt SGML submission wrapper. To resolve a manifest entry to a local file, consumers take the basename of documentUrl and match it against filenames in the accession folder. Entries whose type is GRAPHIC are enumerated in the manifest but are not included in the ZIP.
entities[]Each element describes one filer or subject company. Observed fields include companyName (with an inline role suffix such as (Filer) or (Subject)), cik, fileNo (Commission file number), irsNo, type (form type for this entity's role in the filing), act (Securities act code; 34 for the Exchange Act), fiscalYearEnd in MMDD form, stateOfIncorporation using EDGAR's state/country code table (for example D5 for Brazil), sic encoded as the SIC code followed by its label, filmNo, and tickers.
TYPE: 20FR12BThe primary document is the 20-F-style registration statement itself. It is almost always by far the largest file in the record, typically a multi-megabyte HTML document equivalent to hundreds or even thousands of printed pages. Internally it organizes the Form 20-F items in sequence, interleaving narrative disclosures (business history, risk factors, MD&A, governance and compensation, related-party transactions, regulatory environment) with tabular disclosures (selected financial data, capitalization, shareholding tables, compensation tables, segment breakdowns, debt schedules) and the full audited financial statements with accompanying notes and auditor's report. Because this is a registration rather than a single-period annual report, the financial disclosure is deep: multiple years of comparative statements, segment information, revenue and expense breakdowns, commitments and contingencies, and post-balance-sheet events.
The primary document follows the Form 20-F item sequence: identity of directors, senior management, and advisers; offer statistics and expected timetable; key information (selected financial data, capitalization and indebtedness, reasons for the offer and use of proceeds, risk factors); information on the company (history, business overview, organizational structure, property, plant and equipment); operating and financial review and prospects (MD&A); directors, senior management, and employees (including compensation); major shareholders and related-party transactions; financial information (legal proceedings, dividend policy, significant changes); the offer and listing; additional information (memorandum and articles of association, material contracts, exchange controls, taxation, documents on display); quantitative and qualitative disclosures about market risk; and, where applicable, description of securities other than equity securities. Audited financial statements prepared under U.S. GAAP or IFRS, accompanied by the independent auditor's report and accounting-policy notes, are incorporated into the body of the filing.
EX-1.xArticles of association, bylaws, memoranda of incorporation, and other organizational documents. Foreign issuers frequently file English translations of foreign-language originals as separate sub-exhibits alongside the native-language documents.
EX-2.xDeposit agreements for American Depositary Receipts, indentures for debt instruments, forms of security certificate, and descriptions of the rights attached to registered securities. Amendments to underlying instruments are filed as their own numbered exhibits (for example an original EX-2.3 deposit agreement and a separate EX-2.4 amendment).
EX-4.x, EX-10.xMaterial agreements such as shareholder agreements, credit facilities, strategic partnerships, licensing arrangements, employment or service contracts with senior management, and other contracts material to the business. Content ranges from short letter agreements to multi-hundred-page credit and security documents.
EX-8.xLists of significant subsidiaries with jurisdiction of organization, supporting the issuer's disclosure of organizational structure.
EX-15.xA short signed letter from the independent registered public accounting firm consenting to the incorporation of its audit report into the registration statement. This is a required element of registration. The consent is typically a single-page HTML document whose signature block is an image reference; the image itself is not packaged in the ZIP and must be retrieved from EDGAR through the manifest URL if rendering of the signature is required.
TYPE: GRAPHICImages embedded in the HTML documents (logos, signatures, inline figures, charts). They are catalogued in the manifest with type: GRAPHIC and their EDGAR URLs are preserved, but the binary files themselves are stripped from the ZIP.
Every .htm, .txt, and similar textual document in the record is delivered with its original EDGAR SGML envelope, which looks like:
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<DOCUMENT>
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<TYPE>20FR12B
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<SEQUENCE>1
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<FILENAME>ea0249630-20fr12b_brbibr.htm
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<DESCRIPTION>REGISTRATION STATEMENT
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<TEXT>
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<HTML> ... full registration statement HTML ... </HTML>
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</TEXT>
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</DOCUMENT>
The wrapper fields mirror the values in documentFormatFiles[] and are therefore redundant at the dataset level, but they are load-bearing when the file is parsed standalone. Consumers must strip <DOCUMENT>, <TYPE>, <SEQUENCE>, <FILENAME>, <DESCRIPTION>, and <TEXT> markers before feeding the payload to a standard HTML parser.
Each record contains the metadata.json manifest and every textual document in the EDGAR submission: the primary 20FR12B body and all exhibits in the forms in which they were filed. The manifest is complete — it catalogs images as well — so the filing's full inventory, SGML sequencing, document roles, and EDGAR URLs are all recoverable from the record even where the binary payload for a given asset is not bundled.
Image files referenced inside the HTML documents (JPG, GIF, PNG and similar) are excluded from the ZIP. Their URLs remain in metadata.json → documentFormatFiles[] under type: GRAPHIC and can be fetched directly from SEC.gov. Because graphics are stripped, <IMG SRC="..."> references inside HTML dangle locally — this most commonly affects inline auditor-signature images on EX-15.x consents and similar single-image blocks, but it also applies to embedded charts, logos, and any other figures. Correspondence files, staff comment letters, and other non-submission EDGAR artifacts are not part of a 20FR12B accession and are therefore not present.
20FR12B/A filings are structurally indistinguishable from initial 20FR12B filings in this dataset. They carry the same manifest shape, the same exhibit taxonomy, and the same SGML-wrapped HTML payloads. The formType field is the one definitive discriminator. Because each amendment is its own accession, a given issuer's initial registration and its subsequent amendments appear as separate, self-contained records, potentially distributed across different monthly ZIP archives according to their respective filing dates.
The disclosure framework for 20FR12B has tracked the evolution of Form 20-F itself. The most significant shift occurred with the SEC's 1999 adoption of International Disclosure Standards, which restructured Form 20-F around the IOSCO-aligned item schema that modern 20FR12B filings still follow. Subsequent rulemaking expanded required content in several ways: audit-committee and corporate-governance disclosures for foreign private issuers following the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002) and related listing-standard changes; acceptance of IFRS financial statements from foreign private issuers without U.S. GAAP reconciliation beginning with 2007 filings; enhanced risk-factor disclosure; mine-safety disclosure under Dodd-Frank where applicable; conflict-minerals and resource-extraction references; expanded executive-compensation disclosure; and more recently, cybersecurity risk-management and governance disclosures. Each of these changes altered the narrative content a reader will encounter in the primary body of filings from the relevant era.
Exhibit requirements have similarly evolved. Auditor consents under Section 7 of the Securities Act have been consistently required. Code-of-ethics exhibits and other categories were layered in by later rulemaking.
Filings from the mid-1990s through the late 1990s were generally lodged as plain-text ASCII SGML submissions, and the earliest 20FR12B records in the dataset reflect this: the textual payload inside the <TEXT> block is often ASCII prose rather than HTML, with rudimentary table formatting. HTML adoption spread through EDGAR during the late 1990s and early 2000s, and modern 20FR12B filings are delivered as rich HTML inside the same SGML envelope. PDF is sometimes used for graphical exhibits or for documents originally prepared outside the filer's HTML pipeline. Across the full dataset range, the envelope and manifest shape are stable — the SGML wrapper, the EDGAR document-role vocabulary, and the metadata.json schema are consistent from 1996 forward — so the main format variation a consumer encounters is inside the <TEXT> block (ASCII versus HTML versus PDF payload), not in the record packaging.
Several characteristics merit attention when reading or extracting from these records:
documentFormatFiles[] URLs back to SEC.gov.entities[].cik and fileNo; there is no explicit chain pointer on the manifest.type field is the reliable classifier.Each record in the Form 20FR12B Files Dataset is a registration statement submitted to EDGAR by a foreign private issuer acting as the registrant. The filer is the foreign-incorporated issuer itself, not its underwriter, listing exchange, depositary, or U.S. affiliate. Each record is either an initial 20FR12B or a subsequent 20FR12B/A amendment, packaged with the exhibits submitted under that accession number.
"Foreign private issuer" is defined in Rule 3b-4 under the Exchange Act (and Rule 405 under the Securities Act). A non-governmental issuer organized outside the United States qualifies unless more than 50 percent of its voting securities are held of record by U.S. residents and any one of the following is true: a majority of its executive officers or directors are U.S. citizens or residents, more than 50 percent of its assets are located in the United States, or its business is principally administered in the United States.
Within that population, 20FR12B is used by foreign private issuers that are:
The filing is event-driven, not periodic. The trigger is the issuer's application to list a class of securities on a U.S. national securities exchange. Section 12(b) of the Exchange Act requires registration of that class with the Commission as a precondition to exchange trading. There is no recurring deadline; timing follows the listing timetable.
Under Section 12(d) and Rule 12d1-2, registration generally becomes effective 30 days after the Commission receives the exchange's certification that the security has been approved for listing, or earlier if accelerated. In practice, 20FR12B is filed ahead of or concurrently with the exchange application, amended as needed during staff review, and becomes effective around the listing date.
Once effective, the registrant becomes subject to Exchange Act reporting for the registered class, filing annual reports on Form 20-F and furnishing interim and current information on Form 6-K.
Amendments are filed by the same registrant. A single registration can produce multiple /A filings; each has its own accession number and appears as a separate record in the dataset.
The dataset begins in May 1996, reflecting the phase-in of mandatory electronic filing for foreign private issuers on EDGAR. Pre-EDGAR paper Section 12(b) registrations by foreign private issuers existed under predecessor designations but are not part of this electronic dataset.
Form 20FR12B sits between foreign private issuer (FPI) disclosure and Exchange Act registration. The most useful comparisons are the Form 20-F annual report that shares its content template, the sibling Section 12(g) registration (20FR12G), the short-form Section 12(b) path (8-A12B), the Canadian MJDS analog (40FR12B), and the Securities Act registration (F-1) that often accompanies a U.S. listing.
Form 20-F uses the same disclosure template 20FR12B is built on: business description, risk factors, operating and financial review, directors and management, major shareholders, related-party transactions, and financial statements under IFRS, U.S. GAAP, or reconciled home-country GAAP.
The difference is trigger and cadence. 20FR12B is a one-time registration event that brings a class of securities under Section 12(b) for U.S. exchange listing. 20-F is the recurring annual report that follows after effectiveness. Amendments within this dataset (20FR12B/A) cover pre-effectiveness revisions only; post-effectiveness changes appear as 20-F/A. A complete time series on an FPI requires both datasets: 20FR12B for the entry baseline, 20-F for ongoing updates.
20FR12G is the sibling registration form used by FPIs under Section 12(g) rather than Section 12(b). The disclosure content is effectively identical because both rely on the Form 20-F template.
The boundary is listing status. Section 12(b) registration (20FR12B) is tied to listing on a U.S. national securities exchange such as NYSE or Nasdaq. Section 12(g) registration (20FR12G) applies when an issuer crosses asset and shareholder thresholds without exchange listing, or registers voluntarily off-exchange. For a universe of exchange-listed FPIs, 20FR12B is correct; 20FR12G captures a generally smaller, off-exchange population.
8-A12B achieves the same legal result as 20FR12B (registration of a class under Section 12(b)) but through incorporation by reference. It is a short procedural wrapper used when comprehensive disclosure already exists in a concurrent or prior filing such as an F-1.
20FR12B is the long-form, stand-alone version: the full 20-F disclosure package lives inside the filing itself. For text mining, risk factor extraction, or financial disclosure analysis, 20FR12B is rich and self-contained; 8-A12B is not a substitute because its substantive content resides in other filings.
40FR12B is the MJDS analog available to eligible Canadian issuers registering under Section 12(b). It uses the Form 40-F template, which permits heavy reliance on Canadian home-country continuous disclosure.
The two forms share the same registration outcome but cover different filer populations under different disclosure regimes. 40FR12B filings often consist largely of Canadian documents and Canadian GAAP or IFRS financials prepared for the home market; 20FR12B filings follow the 20-F template with U.S.-style integrated disclosure. Complete coverage of FPI U.S. listings typically requires both datasets as complements.
Form F-1 is the Securities Act registration statement FPIs use to register an offering for sale in the United States. It overlaps with 20FR12B in narrative content (business, risk factors, MD&A, audited financials) but operates under a different statute.
F-1 registers a specific offering under the 1933 Act and covers offering mechanics (underwriting, use of proceeds, dilution, plan of distribution). 20FR12B registers a class under the 1934 Act and governs ongoing reporting and exchange listing eligibility, with no offering. An FPI conducting a U.S. IPO typically pairs F-1 with 8-A12B rather than filing 20FR12B; 20FR12B is the long-form Exchange Act path used when no concurrent Securities Act registration is available to piggyback on.
Form 20FR12B is distinguished by four simultaneous attributes: Exchange Act (not Securities Act) registration; Section 12(b) listing trigger (not Section 12(g) threshold); non-MJDS foreign private issuer filer (not Canadian MJDS, which uses 40FR12B); and long-form stand-alone disclosure (not the short-form incorporation-by-reference path of 8-A12B). The dataset captures the comprehensive initial disclosure produced at the moment a foreign issuer enters the U.S. exchange-listed reporting universe. It is complemented, not replaced, by 20-F annual reports downstream, by F-series filings that may register concurrent offerings, and by 20FR12G for the off-exchange FPI population.
Because 20FR12B consolidates business, financial, governance, and ownership disclosure for non-U.S. issuers at the point of listing, it draws a specialized cross-border professional audience.
Capital markets attorneys and disclosure counsel mine the dataset for precedent when drafting new registrations. They focus on jurisdiction-specific risk factors, share-capital and dual-class descriptions, related-party disclosure under home-country regimes, and the 20FR12B/A amendment trail as evidence of staff comment cycles. Output: precedent libraries, first drafts, and junior-associate training.
ECM and cross-border listing teams study how comparable foreign issuers positioned themselves pre-listing. They pull corporate history, pre-listing capitalization, GAAP reconciliations, and security structure (ordinary shares, ADR ratios, voting arrangements) to build pitch books and structure dual listings, de-SPAC combinations with foreign targets, and direct listings.
Listing-qualification and venue-strategy analysts use the filings to profile the 12(b) foreign-issuer population by jurisdiction, industry, accounting standard, free float, and governance-exemption usage. Supports listing-pipeline tracking, venue benchmarking, and policy work on foreign-issuer rules.
EM and international equity researchers treat 20FR12B as the foundational English-language document on a newly U.S.-listed foreign name. They focus on segment financials, related-party flows (often material under founder, family, or state ownership), principal-shareholder tables, and country-specific risk factors. Output: initiation notes and fundamental scorecards on new ADRs and foreign ordinaries.
IR teams at non-U.S. issuers contemplating a U.S. listing study peer precedent: risk-factor tone, competitive positioning framed for U.S. investors, management biographies, and controlling-shareholder descriptions. Supports first-time drafting, controlled-company messaging, and anticipating SEC review by reading 20FR12B/A amendments.
Diligence and forensic teams reconstruct corporate histories of foreign issuers with complex pre-listing reorganizations. Key fields: prior entity names, jurisdictions of incorporation, related-party flows, auditor identity and location, and GAAP-to-IFRS or U.S. GAAP reconciliations. Supports pre-investment diligence, fraud screening, and retrospective review after restatements or enforcement.
Compliance and underwriting-review teams at investment banks use the filings when assessing underwriter, placement-agent, or depositary roles for a foreign issuer. Focus areas: sanctioned-jurisdiction exposure, ownership chains, director and senior-management backgrounds, and prior regulatory actions. Supports KYC, reputational-risk screening, and exception approvals.
Finance and law researchers use the dataset as a comprehensive record of 12(b) registrations by foreign private issuers since 1996. They use filing dates, jurisdiction, industry, and amendment sequences for event studies on cross-listing premia, bonding effects, governance spillovers, and disclosure-quality panels.
Reference-data and corporate-action teams extract issuer identifiers, jurisdiction, auditor, directors, principal shareholders, and exhibits to build ADR and foreign-listing reference tables and entity graphs linking home-country parents to U.S.-listed securities.
Teams building retrieval systems for cross-border capital markets use 20FR12B as a dense English-language corpus on foreign issuers at listing. They focus on section segmentation, entity and jurisdiction tagging, and linkage to subsequent 20-F annual reports. Supports diligence copilots, precedent-retrieval tools for counsel, and Q&A over foreign-issuer disclosures.
The dataset is shared infrastructure for the cross-border listing workflow: securities counsel, ECM bankers, exchange analysts, international buy-side researchers, IR teams at prospective cross-listers, diligence and compliance functions, academics, data vendors, and retrieval-system builders each work a different slice of the same record.
The Form 20FR12B Files Dataset supports a focused set of cross-border listing workflows that depend on the full registration-statement text, its exhibit train, and the accession-level manifest.
Capital markets counsel extract the risk-factor section from the primary 20FR12B document across peer issuers by jurisdiction, industry (from entities[].sic), and filing year. Grouping records by stateOfIncorporation and SIC produces jurisdiction-specific and sector-specific risk-factor corpora used to seed new registration drafts and benchmark the tone of home-country, currency-control, and controlling-shareholder risks.
Disclosure counsel and IR teams join 20FR12B and 20FR12B/A records on entities[].cik plus fileNo to rebuild the full amendment sequence for a given issuer. Diffing the primary body across amendments surfaces the specific disclosures changed in response to staff comments — typically risk factors, MD&A, related-party tables, and revenue recognition notes — which informs drafting strategy and time-to-effectiveness forecasting for new filers.
Reference-data teams parse EX-2.x deposit agreements and security-description exhibits to extract ADR ratios, depositary bank identity, voting pass-through mechanics, and dividend-conversion terms. Combined with tickers and cik from entities[], this feeds ADR reference tables and entity graphs linking foreign parents to their U.S.-listed depositary receipts.
ECM bankers pull pre-listing capitalization tables, principal-shareholder schedules, and GAAP-to-IFRS discussions from the primary body for a set of comparable cross-listers. Filtering records by jurisdiction, fiscal year, and SIC produces peer sets used in pitch books to illustrate typical free-float levels, controlled-company structures, and dual-class configurations adopted by recent foreign listers on NYSE and Nasdaq.
Forensic accountants and diligence analysts use the registration body plus EX-1.x charter exhibits and EX-8.x subsidiary lists to reconstruct pre-listing reorganizations, prior entity names, and group structure. Related-party transaction tables, auditor identity (via EX-15.x consent), and jurisdictional details support fraud screening and counterparty risk review, particularly for issuers from jurisdictions with opaque home-country disclosure.
RAG teams ingest the SGML-unwrapped HTML payloads from each accession, segment on 20-F item boundaries, and tag entities, jurisdictions, and exhibit types from documentFormatFiles[].type. Linking 20FR12B records to downstream 20-F annual reports by CIK produces a time-spanning retrieval index that powers Q&A tools for securities counsel, buy-side analysts, and IR teams working on foreign private issuers.
Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-20fr12b-files.json
This endpoint returns dataset-level metadata including the dataset name, description, last updated timestamp, earliest sample date, total records, total size, covered form types (20FR12B, 20FR12B/A), container format, and file types. It also returns the full dataset download URL and the complete list of individual container files, each with its own size, record count, updated timestamp, and download URL. Use this endpoint to monitor which containers have changed in the most recent refresh run and to decide on a day-by-day basis which containers to download. No API key is required to access this endpoint.
1
{
2
"datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-69ce-aee0-f3cccd85915a",
3
"datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-20fr12b-files.zip",
4
"name": "Form 20FR12B Files Dataset",
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"updatedAt": "2026-04-18T02:55:49.396Z",
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"earliestSampleDate": "1996-05-01",
7
"totalRecords": 3509,
8
"totalSize": 173405044,
9
"formTypes": ["20FR12B", "20FR12B/A"],
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"containerFormat": "ZIP",
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"fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON", "HTML", "PDF"],
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"containers": [
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{
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"downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-20fr12b-files/2026/2026-03.zip",
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"key": "2026/2026-03.zip",
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"size": 3218540,
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"records": 12,
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"updatedAt": "2026-04-18T02:55:49.396Z"
19
}
20
]
21
}
Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-20fr12b-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads the complete dataset archive covering all 20FR12B and 20FR12B/A filings from May 1996 to the present as a single ZIP file. This endpoint requires an API key.
Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-20fr12b-files/2026/2026-03.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Downloads a single monthly container ZIP instead of the full dataset. Replace the year and month segments with any key returned by the dataset index JSON API. This endpoint requires an API key.
The dataset covers Form 20FR12B, the registration statement foreign private issuers use to register a class of securities under Section 12(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 when listing on a U.S. national securities exchange such as NYSE or Nasdaq. Both initial 20FR12B filings and 20FR12B/A amendments are included, each as its own record.
One record is a single EDGAR submission identified by its accession number, delivered as an accession-level folder containing a metadata.json manifest and every non-image document from the original submission. That document bundle includes the primary 20-F-style registration-statement body plus its full exhibit train (articles and bylaws, deposit agreements, indentures, material contracts, subsidiary lists, auditor consents, and related items).
The filer is the foreign-incorporated issuer itself — a foreign private issuer as defined in Rule 3b-4 under the Exchange Act — not its underwriter, listing exchange, depositary, or U.S. affiliate. The form is used when the issuer is registering a class of equity or debt securities to be listed on a U.S. national securities exchange, is using the Form 20-F disclosure framework, and is not already registered under Section 12(b) for the class in question.
The filing is event-driven, not periodic. The trigger is the issuer's application to list a class of securities on a U.S. national securities exchange; 20FR12B is typically filed ahead of or concurrently with the exchange application, amended as needed during staff review, and becomes effective around the listing date. There is no recurring cadence for a single filer, because a 20FR12B is typically a one-time event for a given foreign issuer entering a U.S. exchange.
The dataset begins on May 1, 1996, reflecting the phase-in of mandatory electronic filing for foreign private issuers on EDGAR, and extends to the present. Pre-EDGAR paper Section 12(b) registrations by foreign private issuers existed under predecessor designations but are not part of this electronic dataset.
Records are grouped into monthly ZIP archives under the path pattern <YYYY>/<YYYY>-<MM>.zip, with per-accession sub-folders containing TXT, JSON, HTML, and PDF files. The metadata.json manifest is JSON; textual filing documents (primary body and exhibits) are delivered inside their original EDGAR SGML envelope, which must be stripped before feeding the payload to a standard HTML parser.
Form 20-F uses the same disclosure template as 20FR12B, but the trigger and cadence differ: 20FR12B is a one-time registration event that brings a class of securities under Section 12(b) for U.S. exchange listing, while 20-F is the recurring annual report that follows after effectiveness. Amendments within this dataset (20FR12B/A) cover pre-effectiveness revisions only; post-effectiveness changes appear as 20-F/A, so a complete time series on a foreign private issuer requires both datasets.