The Form DEFC14C Files Dataset is a complete archive of definitive contested information statements filed with the SEC under Section 14(c) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Regulation 14C. Each record is a single EDGAR submission of Form DEFC14C — the disclosure an issuer sends when a corporate action has been authorized by written consent of holders of a majority of its voting securities and a competing or opposing solicitation is underway. A record packages the principal information statement, every exhibit and supplemental document transmitted under the same accession (letters to shareholders, press releases, opposition statements, consent forms, transaction agreements, and biographical materials for nominees), and a generated metadata.json sidecar capturing the EDGAR submission header. The dataset begins on March 1, 1994 (the earliest sample date corresponding to EDGAR availability) and is distributed as monthly ZIP containers covering the file types TXT, JSON, and HTML.
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The dataset is the EDGAR population of Form DEFC14C, the definitive (final) information statement used in the specific situation where shareholder action has been authorized by written consent — so no proxies are being solicited by the issuer — and a competing solicitation or organized opposition is being mounted by another party. The "DEF" prefix marks the definitive version, distinguishing it from the preliminary PREC14C; the "C" suffix marks the contested character of the solicitation, distinguishing it from the routine, uncontested DEF 14C. Schedule 14C governs information-statement disclosure where consent has already been obtained, while Schedule 14A governs proxy solicitations; DEFC14C sits within the Schedule 14C track but, by virtue of being contested, draws on participant-disclosure and soliciting-material requirements that parallel the Schedule 14A regime.
A single DEFC14C submission typically involves two distinct registrant roles. The "Subject" company is the issuer whose corporate action is being contested — usually a merger, recapitalization, asset sale, charter amendment, board change, or going-private transaction effected by majority written consent. The "Filed by" entity is the party circulating opposition or competing materials directly to holders entitled to receive the information statement — typically a dissident shareholder, activist investor, hedge fund, partnership, or competing solicitor. Because contested solicitations under Section 14(c) are uncommon, the historical population of DEFC14C filings is small relative to other proxy-related forms, and many calendar months contain no filings at all.
The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers, one per filing month, with content file types TXT (the EDGAR text wrapper and older plain-text bodies), HTML (modern information-statement and exhibit bodies), and JSON (the generated metadata.json sidecar). The dataset copy excludes image files (logos, photographs, scanned graphics, signature scans) that were part of the original EDGAR submission; all other documents are preserved with their original registrant-supplied filenames and their original SGML/HTML structure intact.
One record in the Form DEFC14C Files Dataset is a single EDGAR submission of Form DEFC14C, identified by its accession number and packaged as a self-contained accession folder. The folder name is the 18-digit accession number with dashes stripped (for example, 0000896017-02-000006 becomes 000089601702000006). The folder groups every document transmitted to EDGAR under that accession — the definitive information statement, all exhibits and supporting attachments as filed — together with a generated metadata.json sidecar that captures the structured EDGAR header and the document index for the submission.
Within a container, the accession folder may sit directly under the month root or inside an inner YYYY-MM/ directory, and consumers should resolve records by locating folders whose names are 18-digit accession numbers rather than by assuming a fixed depth. The stable identifier of a record is the accession-number folder, not any particular document filename inside it.
The accession folder contains two complementary layers:
metadata.json — a JSON sidecar generated from the EDGAR submission header that gives a structured, machine-readable view of the filing: form type, accession number, acceptance timestamp, links back to the EDGAR-hosted versions, an enumerated list of every document attached to the submission, and one entry per party associated with the filing.<TYPE>, <SEQUENCE>, and <FILENAME>, with the body content carried inside <TEXT>...</TEXT>. The body may be plain ASCII prose (typical for early filings, short cover letters, and press releases) or HTML markup (typical for modern information statements and richer exhibits).The two layers describe the same submission from complementary angles: the JSON tells a consumer what the submission contains and who filed it, while the SGML-wrapped documents carry the actual disclosure text.
metadata.jsonThe metadata sidecar exposes the following fields per record:
formType — always DEFC14C for this dataset.accessionNo — the dashed accession number (e.g., 0000896017-02-000006).filedAt — ISO 8601 timestamp with timezone offset, marking the EDGAR acceptance time.description — human-readable form label ("Form DEFC14C - Definitive information statement, contested solicitations").linkToFilingDetails — URL to the primary document on sec.gov.linkToTxt — URL to the complete submission text file (header plus concatenated documents).linkToHtml — URL to the EDGAR filing index page (...-index.htm).linkToXbrl — URL to XBRL data when present; typically empty for DEFC14C.documentFormatFiles — array of objects describing each attached document, with sequence, size, documentUrl, type, and an optional description. The auto-generated complete-submission text wrapper appears as an additional entry whose sequence and type are blank-space strings rather than numeric values.dataFiles — array of structured/XBRL data files, generally empty for DEFC14C.seriesAndClassesContractsInformation — investment-company series/class metadata, populated only when the subject is a registered investment company that has set up series/class identifiers.entities — array of all parties associated with the filing.id — 32-character hexadecimal provider-internal record identifier.Each entities entry carries cik, companyName, irsNo, stateOfIncorporation, fiscalYearEnd, and optionally act, fileNo, filmNo, type, and tickers. Because DEFC14C is by definition a contested solicitation, an entry pair is the norm: a "Filed by" party (the dissident or competing solicitor) and a "Subject" party (the registrant whose corporate action is being contested). The role distinction is encoded as a parenthetical suffix on companyName — (Filed by) versus (Subject) — rather than as a dedicated role field. The Subject entity typically also carries type: "DEFC14C" and a filmNo; any tickers field is generally populated only on the Subject side, because the filing party is often a fund, partnership, trust, or individual without a listed equity security.
Every document inside the accession folder — whether the principal information statement, an exhibit, or supplemental soliciting material — is preserved with its original EDGAR SGML wrapper:
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<DOCUMENT>
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<TYPE>DEFC14C
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<SEQUENCE>1
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<FILENAME>bbdcprone.txt
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<TEXT>
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... document body ...
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</TEXT>
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</DOCUMENT>
The wrapper tags are line-oriented (each tag and its value sit on a single line), not attribute-style XML. <TYPE> carries the document's role: the principal document carries DEFC14C, while exhibits carry codes from the EX-99-family (EX-99.1, EX-99.2, etc.) or, where applicable, other exhibit codes. <SEQUENCE> indicates document order within the submission, with 1 always the principal disclosure document. <FILENAME> is the registrant-supplied on-disk filename and is preserved verbatim — no normalization is applied beyond the addition of metadata.json. The <TEXT> block holds the body, which may be plain ASCII prose, tagged HTML (a complete <html>...</html> document inside <TEXT>), or, in older submissions, tabular ASCII formatted with whitespace and ruled-line characters. The complete EDGAR submission also begins with an <SEC-HEADER> block before the first <DOCUMENT>; this header is what populates much of metadata.json.
A typical principal DEFC14C document opens with the registrant's name, address, and the information-statement caption ("Information Statement Pursuant to Section 14(c) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 / We are not asking you for a proxy and you are requested not to send us a proxy"), followed by an introductory section identifying the action authorized by written consent and the date that consent became (or will become) effective. The contested context is usually surfaced explicitly in an opening paragraph stating that a competing solicitation, opposition, or alternative proposal is being conducted. The body then proceeds through the substantive disclosures: identification and address of soliciting parties and participants, classes and amounts of voting securities outstanding, record date holders, beneficial-ownership tables for principals and affiliates, the description and rationale of the corporate action, the dissenting position or competing proposal, financial terms and material agreements where applicable, and, where relevant, a section on dissenters' or appraisal rights. The document closes with a date line and a signature block, often executed by an officer or representative of the filing party rather than the subject company.
Where the substance of the contest is short — for example a press release announcing director nominations, an opposition statement against a proposed rights offering, or a brief notice of dissenting position — the entire payload may consist of a single short text document plus the metadata sidecar, with no additional exhibits. Where the contest is more elaborate, exhibits frequently include letters to shareholders, press releases, definitive proxy or consent revocation cards, advertisements and scripts, transcripts of investor presentations, biographical materials for nominees, and copies of merger agreements or other transaction documents being contested.
Each record includes:
metadata.json sidecar with the structured header view, the document index, and the entity list distinguishing filer from subject.The dataset copy excludes image files (logos, photographs, scanned graphics, signature scans) that were part of the original EDGAR submission. Cross-references and incorporation by reference pointers to other filings (for example to a related Schedule 14A, Schedule 14C, Schedule 13D, or a registration statement) are preserved as text inside the documents, but the externally-referenced filings are not bundled into the record. Related submissions in the contest lifecycle — PREC14C (preliminary contested information statement), DEFR14C (revised definitive), DFAN14A (additional definitive contested soliciting material), or SC 14D9 in tender offer contexts — travel under their own form codes and are not included in this dataset; only filings bearing the DEFC14C form code are present.
Form DEFC14C and its underlying Regulation 14C disclosure framework have been stable in their core requirements since the dataset's earliest covered filings in 1994. The required substantive disclosures — identification of soliciting parties, classes and amounts of voting securities, record date, description of the action authorized by written consent, beneficial ownership, and material interests of participants — have remained the backbone of the form throughout. SEC amendments to the proxy and information-statement rules over the years (the 1992 communications reforms, subsequent participant-disclosure changes, and later refinements relating to soliciting-material filing) have shaped how supplemental written soliciting materials, advertisements, and press releases are filed alongside the definitive information statement. As a result, exhibit composition in later submissions tends to be richer than in early filings, where the principal document often stood alone or was accompanied by only a single press-release exhibit.
The earliest DEFC14C records in the dataset are filed in plain ASCII text. The body inside <TEXT> is line-wrapped prose, tables are rendered with whitespace and ruled-line characters, and exhibits are concatenated as additional <DOCUMENT> blocks of plain-text type. Through the late 1990s and 2000s, registrants increasingly transitioned to HTML-formatted submissions, where the <TEXT> body is itself a complete HTML document (<html>...</html>) carrying styled headings, tabular ownership disclosures, and inline formatting. The file types found in the dataset are TXT (the EDGAR text wrapper and older plain-text bodies), HTML (modern information-statement and exhibit bodies), and JSON (the generated metadata.json sidecar). The SGML envelope itself has been constant across the entire history of the dataset, so a consumer can rely on the same <DOCUMENT>/<TYPE>/<SEQUENCE>/<FILENAME>/<TEXT> decomposition regardless of filing year.
companyName inside entities ((Filed by) versus (Subject)), and a single submission almost always carries both. Any analysis that needs to attribute disclosures to the dissenting party or to the issuer must parse this suffix; the CIK alone is not sufficient because both parties are real registrants with their own CIKs.linkToFilingDetails and linkToTxt may therefore point to different /data/<cik>/... paths, which is normal for contested-solicitation filings and is not an inconsistency.documentFormatFiles array contains one entry that represents the auto-generated complete-submission text file (header plus concatenated documents). That entry carries blank-space strings in sequence and type rather than numeric values, and it is not a registrant-uploaded document; consumers iterating over documents should treat it accordingly.metadata.json. Locating the principal document programmatically should be done via documentFormatFiles (the sequence: 1 entry, or the entry whose type is DEFC14C) rather than by guessing filenames.seriesAndClassesContractsInformation may be populated; for operating-company subjects it is empty. The presence or absence of this block is therefore a reliable signal of investment-company subjects.dataFiles array and linkToXbrl field are typically empty and the disclosure content is consumed as text/HTML rather than via structured financial tags.Form DEFC14C is filed by the issuer itself: a company with a class of securities registered under Section 12 of the Exchange Act that is taking a corporate action authorized by the written consent of the holders of a majority of its outstanding voting securities, in circumstances where a competing or opposing solicitation is occurring in connection with that action. Because Section 14(c) applies only when the issuer is not soliciting proxies, consents, or authorizations, the issuer is the responsible filer.
Typical DEFC14C filers are domestic operating companies, often controlled by one or more majority or near-majority holders, effecting matters such as mergers, charter amendments, reverse stock splits, recapitalizations, sales of substantially all assets, or director election or removal through written consent in lieu of a meeting. Delaware General Corporation Law Section 228 is the most common state-law basis, though analogous provisions in other state codes apply. Registered investment companies are within the Section 14(c) regime in principle but rarely produce contested information statements.
The opposing solicitor (a dissident shareholder or competing group) is not a DEFC14C filer. Opposition materials are filed separately under Regulation 14A, typically as PREC14A, DEFC14A, or DFAN14A.
A DEFC14C filing is event-driven and arises only when both conditions are present:
Timing is governed primarily by Rule 14c-2 and Rule 14c-5:
Post-dissemination updates are filed as DEFA14C (additional definitive materials) or as amendments to the original submission.
The form is authorized by Section 14(c) of the Exchange Act and Regulation 14C (17 CFR 240.14c-1 through 240.14c-101). Disclosure content is prescribed by Schedule 14C (Rule 14c-101), which directs the issuer to provide the Schedule 14A (Rule 14a-101) items that would apply to the matter being acted upon, adapted to an information-statement context where no proxies are sought. Within Regulation 14C, the operative rules are Rule 14c-2 (transmission and 20-day timing), Rule 14c-5 (preliminary and definitive filing mechanics), Rule 14c-6 (anti-fraud), and Rule 14c-7 (broker and nominee distribution).
The "C" in the EDGAR submission type "DEFC14C" flags the contested context; it does not change the underlying statutory authority. The companion EDGAR codes are DEF 14C (definitive, uncontested), PRE 14C (preliminary, uncontested), and PREC14C (preliminary, contested).
DEFC14C sits at the intersection of three independent disclosure axes: information statement (not proxy), contested (not routine), and definitive (not preliminary). Each axis defines a neighboring form that is otherwise nearly identical in legal posture.
DEF 14C — Definitive uncontested information statement. Same Regulation 14C instrument and same definitive stage, but no competing solicitation. DEF 14C covers the routine "majority has consented, no action required" population and is far larger. DEFC14C adds opposition statements, identification of the competing solicitor, and discussion of the contested matter. Use DEF 14C for the full universe of consent solicitation-based corporate actions; DEFC14C isolates the contested subset.
PREC14C — Preliminary contested information statement. The pre-clearance version of DEFC14C, filed before distribution and subject to staff review. Content can shift materially before the definitive version ships. Pair with DEFC14C for lifecycle and event-study work; cite only DEFC14C as the disclosure shareholders actually received.
PRE 14C — Preliminary uncontested information statement. Differs from DEFC14C on two axes at once: uncontested and preliminary. Useful only as a reference point for routine pre-clearance disclosure; not a substitute on either dimension.
DEFC14A — Definitive contested proxy statement. The Section 14(a) analog: same contest posture and adversarial mechanics, but a shareholder vote is actually being solicited. Record dates, meeting logistics, and proxy-card procedures are central in DEFC14A; DEFC14C presupposes the vote has been displaced by majority written consent. To capture the full population of contested corporate actions, pull both and partition by consent vs. vote.
PREC14A — Preliminary contested proxy statement. Pre-clearance form of DEFC14A. Differs from DEFC14C on both regime (14(a) vs. 14(c)) and lifecycle stage (preliminary vs. definitive). Relevant only for tracking how a contested vote-based matter evolves through staff review.
DFAN14A — Definitive additional materials, non-management. The vehicle the opposing solicitor (dissident, activist) uses to file its own soliciting materials. Complements rather than substitutes for DEFC14C: DEFC14C carries the issuer's information statement and its account of the opposition; DFAN14A carries the opposing party's direct communications. Together they reconstruct both sides of a contest.
DEF 14A — Definitive uncontested proxy statement. Differs from DEFC14C on all three axes (proxy, uncontested, routine). Useful only as a baseline for what ordinary shareholder communication looks like; not interchangeable in any practical sense. See DEF 14A for the routine proxy-statement reference.
DEFC14C is defined by the simultaneous presence of three conditions:
The dataset's small footprint reflects how rare this intersection is: written-consent procedures typically arise where a majority holder can act unilaterally, making organized opposition structurally difficult. Researchers studying control contests or activist campaigns should expect DEFC14A and DFAN14A to carry most of the contested-solicitation population, with DEFC14C reserved for the narrow set of disputes that play out around a consent-driven action.
DEFC14C is a narrow, high-signal disclosure, and the corpus is effectively the complete population of contested written-consent statements since EDGAR began. Its users are specialists rather than a general investor audience.
Securities lawyers running consent-solicitation, proxy-fight, and contested-M&A practices use the corpus as a precedent library. Drafting counsel benchmark the description-of-the-corporate-action, background-of-the-transaction, and risk-factor sections, plus the framing of soliciting parties and treatment of opposition statements. Litigators preparing or defending Section 14(c) challenges mine prior filings for opposition language, supplemental letters, and exhibit sequencing that became points of dispute. Filer/subject metadata plus the full document set let counsel reconstruct exactly what was filed, in what order, and with which exhibits.
Activist desks and event-driven funds treat a DEFC14C as direct evidence that a written-consent action is contested rather than passing unopposed. Soliciting parties, record date, class and amount of voting securities, and the specific corporate action drive situation models. The contested-matter narrative and any opposition statements inform views on whether the consent was procured under disputed circumstances and what the timeline to effectiveness looks like. The 1994-onward population supports base rates on how often contested consents are blocked, restructured, or litigated.
Arb desks flag deals proceeding via written consent rather than a vote. They focus on the record-date disclosure, the identity of consenting majority holders, and the corporate action being authorized to assess unwind, injunction, and appraisal risk. Opposition statements and competing-proposal exhibits are read for topping-bid signals and used to reprice spreads on consent-driven deals.
Academic and policy researchers studying minority-shareholder protections, controlling-shareholder behavior, and consent-based action use the dataset as a hand-curated population for empirical work. They extract filer/subject identifiers, record date, voting-security class and amount, and the contested-matter narrative to code consent-abuse claims, dual-class dynamics, and patterns of organized opposition. The corpus is small enough for full manual coding across three decades.
Solicitation firms and investor-relations advisers working contested-consent assignments study how prior campaigns were communicated through the information statement. They focus on the soliciting-party identification, the corporate-action narrative, and the structure of opposition statements and supplemental letters in the exhibits, then translate that into outreach scripts, record-date communications, and disclosure tone for clients.
In-house counsel at issuers contemplating a consent-based corporate action use DEFC14C filings as a contested-disclosure checklist. They review how prior registrants identified voting securities, set and disclosed the record date, described the action, and accommodated competing solicitations under Regulation 14C. Metadata entity arrays and exhibit listings help calibrate disclosure depth and anticipate likely opposition vectors.
Corporation Finance reviewers and Section 14(c) policy researchers use the historical corpus to track how registrants implement contested-consent disclosure over time. Review focuses on whether the contested-matter description, voting-security disclosure, and record-date information satisfy Regulation 14C, and whether opposition statements were properly accommodated. The complete per-accession document set supports retrospective review and identification of recurring deficiencies.
Reporters covering activism, contested transactions, and controlling-shareholder disputes use the dataset to reconstruct events from primary documents rather than one-sided press releases. Filer/subject metadata, record date, and the contested-matter narrative anchor feature pieces and longform investigations on minority-shareholder fights.
Teams building retrieval and fine-tuning corpora for securities-law and governance applications use DEFC14C as a low-volume, high-signal set. Structured metadata plus full text supports indexing by filer, subject, record date, and contested-matter type, and helps train systems to distinguish DEFC14C from adjacent forms (PREC14C, DEF 14C, DEFC14A) and to surface clauses such as opposition statements and competing-proposal descriptions.
Users cluster tightly around contested written-consent mechanics: counsel who draft and litigate them, activists and arbs who trade around them, researchers who study them, solicitors and IR advisers who run them, regulators who review them, and journalists who cover them. The fields that consistently drive professional use are filer/subject identifiers, record date, voting-securities disclosure, the contested-matter narrative, opposition statements, and the exhibit package.
The Form DEFC14C corpus functions as a precedent library and a closed-population research corpus rather than a high-frequency signal source. The use cases below reflect that scale.
Securities lawyers drafting or defending a Section 14(c) contested information statement pull every accession folder, locate the principal document via the documentFormatFiles entry where type is DEFC14C, and extract the description-of-the-corporate-action, identification-of-soliciting-parties, and opposition-statement sections. The exhibit set (letters to shareholders, press releases, consent-revocation cards) is preserved with original SGML <TYPE> and <SEQUENCE> tags, so counsel can reconstruct the full disclosure package and exhibit ordering used in prior contests when assembling their own filing.
Academic researchers studying minority-shareholder protections in consent-based actions treat the corpus as the closed historical population. They parse the entities array, split filer from subject by the (Filed by) and (Subject) parenthetical suffix on companyName, and join CIKs against industry, controlling-shareholder, and outcome data. The contested-matter narrative and opposition statements are hand-coded for consent-abuse claims, dual-class dynamics, and topic taxonomy across the three-decade window.
Reporters and longform researchers use the filedAt timestamp, subject CIK, and filer CIK to anchor a written-consent dispute, then pull the matching DFAN14A soliciting materials and any related Schedule 13D filings under the same filer CIK. Within the DEFC14C record itself, the principal document carries the issuer's account of the opposition while attached letters and press-release exhibits expose the rhetorical framing each side used; together they support primary-source reconstructions that go beyond one-sided press coverage.
When a deal proceeds by majority written consent rather than a vote, arb and event-driven desks add the relevant DEFC14C accession to the situation file. They extract the record date, the description of the corporate action authorized by written consent, the identities of the consenting majority holders from beneficial-ownership tables, and any competing-proposal exhibits. These feed unwind-risk, injunction-risk, appraisal-rights, and topping-bid assessments on the small number of consent-driven contests that arise each year.
Teams building retrieval, classification, and extraction systems for securities filings use DEFC14C as a clean, low-volume positive class for distinguishing contested information statements from adjacent forms (DEF 14C, PREC14C, DEFC14A, DFAN14A). The principal document plus exhibits provide labeled examples of opposition-statement language, competing-proposal descriptions, and consent-effectiveness paragraphs, while metadata.json supplies ground-truth filer/subject roles, record dates, and exhibit-type labels for evaluation harnesses.
In-house securities counsel at an issuer anticipating a contested consent-based action walk the corpus as a Regulation 14C disclosure checklist. They compare how prior registrants identified classes and amounts of voting securities, set and disclosed the record date, framed the corporate action, and accommodated competing solicitations. The full exhibit listings in documentFormatFiles indicate the supplemental materials (consent forms, biographical disclosures for nominees, transaction agreements) that prior filers chose to include, helping calibrate disclosure depth before drafting begins.
The Form DEFC14C Files Dataset is small in size, so downloading the full archive in one request is the most practical access method. The dataset index JSON API and per-container downloads are also available for clients that prefer a more granular approach.
Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-defc14c-files.json
This endpoint returns dataset metadata such as the dataset name, description, last refresh timestamp, earliest sample date, total record count, total size in bytes, covered form types (DEFC14C), container format (ZIP), and content file types (TXT, JSON, HTML). It also returns the download URL for the full dataset archive and a list of individual container files, where each container entry includes its own download URL, key, size, record count, and last updated timestamp. This endpoint does not require an API key.
The index is useful for monitoring which containers were touched in the most recent refresh run, so a client can decide on a daily basis which container files to re-download instead of pulling the entire archive every time.
Example response:
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{
2
"datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-6a46-928e-ca1cb1dd9529",
3
"datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-defc14c-files.zip",
4
"name": "Form DEFC14C Files Dataset",
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"updatedAt": "2026-04-16T08:41:45.749Z",
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"earliestSampleDate": "1994-03-01",
7
"totalRecords": 26,
8
"totalSize": 333749,
9
"formTypes": ["DEFC14C"],
10
"containerFormat": "ZIP",
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"fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON", "HTML"],
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"containers": [
13
{
14
"downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-defc14c-files/2026/2026-03.zip",
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"key": "2026/2026-03.zip",
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"size": 13818,
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"records": 2,
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"updatedAt": "2026-04-16T08:41:45.749Z"
19
}
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]
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}
Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-defc14c-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Returns the complete dataset as a single ZIP archive containing all DEFC14C filings since the earliest sample date of 1994-03-01. Because the dataset is compact, this is the simplest way to obtain the full corpus in one request. This endpoint requires an API key, appended via the ?token=YOUR_API_KEY query parameter.
Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-defc14c-files/2026/2026-03.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY
Returns one individual monthly container file as listed in the containers array of the dataset index. Use this when you only need filings from a specific period rather than the full archive. This endpoint requires an API key, appended via the ?token=YOUR_API_KEY query parameter.
The dataset covers Form DEFC14C, the definitive information statement filed under Section 14(c) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and Regulation 14C when corporate action has been authorized by written consent of holders of a majority of the voting securities and a competing or opposing solicitation is being conducted. Only filings bearing the DEFC14C form code are included; related lifecycle filings such as PREC14C, DEFR14C, and DFAN14A are not.
One record is a single EDGAR submission of Form DEFC14C, packaged as a self-contained accession folder named with the 18-digit accession number (dashes stripped). The folder contains the principal information statement, every exhibit transmitted under the same accession, and a generated metadata.json sidecar capturing the EDGAR submission header and document index.
The issuer files DEFC14C — a company with a class of securities registered under Section 12 of the Exchange Act that is taking a corporate action authorized by written consent of majority shareholders, in circumstances where a competing or opposing solicitation is occurring. The opposing solicitor (a dissident shareholder or competing group) is not the DEFC14C filer; opposition materials are filed separately under Regulation 14A (typically PREC14A, DEFC14A, or DFAN14A).
The dataset begins on March 1, 1994 — the earliest sample date corresponding to EDGAR availability — and runs through the most recent refresh. Pre-EDGAR paper filings exist but are not included. Because contested written-consent solicitations are uncommon, many calendar months contain no filings at all.
The dataset is distributed as monthly ZIP containers. Within each accession folder, the file types are TXT (the EDGAR text wrapper and older plain-text bodies), HTML (modern information-statement and exhibit bodies), and JSON (the generated metadata.json sidecar). Image files from the original EDGAR submission are excluded.
DEF 14C is the definitive uncontested information statement under the same Regulation 14C instrument; DEFC14C adds opposition statements, identification of the competing solicitor, and discussion of the contested matter. DEFC14A is the Section 14(a) contested proxy statement, used when a shareholder vote is actually being solicited; DEFC14C presupposes the vote has been displaced by majority written consent. The presence of an actual solicitation of shareholder authority is the dividing line between the 14C and 14A regimes.
Use the documentFormatFiles array in metadata.json: the principal document is the entry with sequence: 1, or equivalently the entry whose type is DEFC14C. Filenames inside the accession folder are registrant-supplied and unnormalized, so guessing filenames is unreliable; the only filename stable across records is metadata.json.