Form F-3MEF Files Dataset

The Form F-3MEF Files Dataset is a complete corpus of EDGAR submissions filed on Form F-3MEF — the short-form Securities Act registration statement that a foreign private issuer (FPI) files under Rule 462(b) to register up to an additional 20% of securities for an offering already covered by a previously effective Form F-3. One record corresponds to a single accession-numbered EDGAR submission and contains a filing-level metadata.json plus the human-readable document files (the F-3MEF primary, EX-5.1 legality opinion, EX-23.x auditor consents, and the EX-107 inline-XBRL filing-fee exhibit) that constituted the original submission. The dataset is published by sec-api.io as monthly ZIP containers keyed YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip, with coverage beginning 1 September 1999 and continuing through the latest refresh. Because F-3MEF is an event-driven, same-day filing — effective automatically the moment EDGAR accepts the submission — the population is intrinsically sparse and the dataset is best treated as a precise event marker for upsized FPI shelf takedowns.

Update Frequency
Daily
Updated at
2026-04-16
Earliest Sample Date
1999-09-01
Total Size
632.6 KB
Total Records
193
Container Format
ZIP
Content Types
TXT, JSON, HTML
Form Types
F-3MEF

Dataset APIs

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:

Dataset Files

39 files · 632.6 KB
Download All
2025-10.zip18.5 KB5 records
2025-01.zip31.2 KB8 records
2022-08.zip14.3 KB4 records
2021-09.zip17.2 KB4 records
2021-06.zip14.8 KB3 records
2021-04.zip17.9 KB4 records
2021-03.zip12.8 KB3 records
2021-02.zip70.6 KB18 records
2021-01.zip24.6 KB7 records
2020-12.zip13.7 KB3 records
2020-11.zip10.7 KB3 records
2020-09.zip28.3 KB8 records
2020-01.zip11.0 KB3 records
2019-04.zip16.3 KB5 records
2018-02.zip11.9 KB3 records
2017-10.zip11.3 KB3 records
2016-09.zip9.0 KB4 records
2016-07.zip10.8 KB4 records
2015-11.zip10.1 KB2 records
2014-01.zip17.7 KB5 records
2013-11.zip19.3 KB5 records
2013-08.zip13.3 KB3 records
2013-01.zip11.8 KB4 records
2012-10.zip13.3 KB4 records
2011-04.zip10.4 KB3 records
2010-11.zip11.6 KB3 records
2010-03.zip11.6 KB3 records
2010-01.zip23.0 KB6 records
2005-11.zip18.7 KB8 records
2005-09.zip28.5 KB12 records
2004-02.zip13.9 KB5 records
2003-08.zip15.4 KB6 records
2003-06.zip21.3 KB8 records
2002-04.zip6.6 KB3 records
2001-11.zip7.5 KB4 records
2001-06.zip16.6 KB9 records
2001-01.zip4.9 KB2 records
2000-10.zip7.1 KB3 records
1999-09.zip5.1 KB3 records

What This Dataset Contains

The dataset contains every EDGAR Form F-3MEF accession the SEC has accepted from foreign private issuers since September 1999, packaged for bulk consumption. Form F-3MEF is the foreign-issuer counterpart to Form S-3MEF: a "MEF" (More Equity Filed) registration statement filed under Securities Act Rule 462(b), which permits a registrant to register additional securities of the same class as those covered by an effective registration statement, up to 20% of the maximum aggregate offering price set out in the earlier "Calculation of Registration Fee" table. The form is extraordinarily short — it incorporates the prior Form F-3 by reference under Rule 411 rather than restating the prospectus, identifies the additional securities being registered, calculates the incremental registration fee, and is declared effective automatically upon filing with no SEC review cycle. Every F-3MEF therefore carries an effectivenessDate equal to the calendar date of filedAt.

Records are distributed as monthly ZIP archives. Each archive unpacks to a YYYY-MM/ directory whose immediate children are accession-number folders, one per F-3MEF filing effective in that calendar month. Filing volume is low and uneven; many monthly archives contain only one or two accession folders, and many calendar months are absent entirely from the coverage window. The substantive disclosure inside any single record is concentrated in a handful of documents: the F-3MEF cover/registration statement itself, the legality opinion of counsel (EX-5.1), one or more accountants' consents (EX-23.1), and the filing-fee exhibit (EX-107). Almost everything else — the prospectus, the risk factors, the selling securityholders tables, the description of capital stock, the plan of distribution, audited financial statements, and most other disclosures required by Form F-3 — lives in the parent Form F-3 and is pulled in only by reference.

Content Structure of a Single F-3MEF Record

What one record represents

One record in this dataset is one complete EDGAR submission filed on Form F-3MEF. Physically, a record corresponds to a single accession-numbered folder: the folder is named with the 18-digit numeric accession number (hyphens stripped from the canonical XXXXXXXXXX-XX-XXXXXX form) and holds one filing-level metadata.json plus the human-readable document files that constituted the original EDGAR submission. There is exactly one record per F-3MEF accession number. Because F-3MEF is filed only by Form F-3-eligible foreign private issuers, and only when an at-the-limit follow-on registration is needed, the dataset is intrinsically sparse.

Container layout and per-record file structure

Inside an accession folder, the invariant artifact is metadata.json. The remaining files are the document attachments that were part of the original EDGAR submission, written to disk under the exact filenames the registrant used (typically a printer-assigned stem followed by an exhibit suffix such as _f3mef-…, _ex5-1, _ex23-1, or _ex-107). Sequence numbers from the EDGAR submission are not encoded in the filenames — they are recoverable from the sequence field on each documentFormatFiles entry inside metadata.json.

A typical accession folder contains five to eight files: the F-3MEF primary document, one EX-5.1 opinion of counsel, one or two EX-23.x auditor consents, and one EX-107 (EX-FILING FEES) inline-XBRL fee exhibit. Larger filings may add additional opinions, consents, or powers of attorney; the smallest filings carry only the registration statement and the fee exhibit.

The metadata.json schema

metadata.json is a single JSON object that mirrors the canonical sec-api filing record for the accession. Its fields fall into several functional groups.

Identification and timing. formType is always the string "F-3MEF". accessionNo carries the canonical hyphenated accession number. id is an internal hash. filedAt is an ISO-8601 timestamp with Eastern offset, and effectivenessDate is the calendar date of automatic effectiveness — the two always agree to the day for F-3MEF. description is a human-readable label of the form "Form F-3MEF - Registration statement to add securities to prior Form F-3 registration [Rule 462(b)]".

EDGAR cross-links. linkToFilingDetails resolves to the primary F-3MEF HTML on SEC.gov; linkToTxt points at the complete SGML submission .txt on SEC.gov; linkToHtml is the EDGAR filing-index page (...-index.htm); linkToXbrl is generally an empty string for F-3MEF because the form itself does not carry financial-statement XBRL.

documentFormatFiles[]. An array with one entry per attached document in the EDGAR submission. Each entry carries sequence (numeric string, with a single space " " used as a sentinel for the complete-submission .txt row), size (byte size as a string), documentUrl (direct SEC.gov URL — EX-107 entries use the https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=... inline-XBRL viewer URL), type (the EDGAR exhibit-type code: F-3MEF, EX-5.1, EX-23.1, EX-23.2, EX-FILING FEES, GRAPHIC, etc.), and an optional description (e.g., "FILING FEE IXBRL", "GRAPHIC", "Complete submission text file"). This array enumerates the entire original submission package, including items not written to disk in the dataset.

dataFiles[]. An array describing XBRL/XML side-files associated with the submission. For F-3MEF this is typically a single type: "XML" entry pointing at the extracted XBRL instance for the EX-107 fee exhibit (e.g., ..._ex-107_htm.xml). The XML side-file is referenced but not extracted into the ZIP.

entities[]. One element per filer on the submission. Each entity object carries cik, companyName (with the EDGAR role suffix preserved, e.g. "… (Filer)"), fileNo (the Securities Act 333--series file number — for F-3MEF this is the file number of the parent Form F-3 being supplemented), irsNo (often "000000000" for non-U.S. registrants without a U.S. EIN), stateOfIncorporation (two-character EDGAR code; foreign jurisdictions appear as country codes such as D8 for the British Virgin Islands, E9 for the Cayman Islands, M0 for Bermuda), fiscalYearEnd (MMDD), act ("33" for Securities Act), type ("F-3MEF"), sic (the four-digit SIC code joined to its description, with HTML entities preserved verbatim — e.g., "3674 Semiconductors & Related Devices"), filmNo, and tickers (an array of trading symbols).

seriesAndClassesContractsInformation[]. Reserved for investment-company series/class identifiers; effectively always empty for F-3MEF, which is an operating-company form.

The document files themselves

Each non-fee document on disk is a verbatim slice of the original EDGAR SGML submission, meaning the .htm file is wrapped in the SGML <DOCUMENT> envelope rather than being a bare HTML payload. The leading lines take the form:

1 <DOCUMENT>
2 <TYPE>F-3MEF
3 <SEQUENCE>1
4 <FILENAME>…_f3mef-….htm
5 <TEXT>
6 <HTML>
7
8 </HTML>
9 </TEXT>
10 </DOCUMENT>

The closing </TEXT></DOCUMENT> lines appear as the final bytes of the file. Consumers feeding these documents into HTML parsers must strip the SGML preamble and trailer; a tolerant parser will usually accept the file as-is but with a synthetic root element.

The fee exhibit (EX-FILING FEES, EDGAR exhibit type 107) is the structural exception. It is delivered as a standalone inline-XBRL XHTML document with an XML prolog and the SEC's filing-fee namespaces — including inlineXBRL — declared on the <html> element (xmlns:ix="http://www.xbrl.org/2013/inlineXBRL", xmlns:ffd="http://xbrl.sec.gov/ffd/YYYY", xmlns:dei="…"), referencing schema https://xbrl.sec.gov/ffd/YYYY/ffd-YYYY.xsd. The body carries ix:nonNumeric and ix:nonFraction facts that encode the structured fee table — for example ffd:SubmissnTp (submission type, e.g. "F-3MEF"), ffd:FeeExhibitTp ("EX-FILING FEES"), dei:EntityCentralIndexKey, ffd:RegnFileNb (the prior registration file number), and the per-row offering, fee-rate, fee-paid, and offset fields. This exhibit has no SGML <DOCUMENT> wrapper because EDGAR delivers iXBRL fee exhibits as standalone inline documents.

Per-component content

  • F-3MEF primary document. A short registration statement whose cover page identifies the registrant (legal name, jurisdiction of incorporation, principal executive office address, registered agent, IRS employer identification or its absence, SIC code), states that the filing is being made under Rule 462(b), names the prior Form F-3 by file number, and identifies the additional securities being registered (class, amount, and aggregate offering price up to the 20% Rule 462(b) cap). It incorporates Part I and Part II of the parent Form F-3 by reference under Rule 411, lists the additional exhibits filed herewith, and concludes with a signatures page (registrant signature, principal officers, and majority of the board, with attorneys-in-fact where powers of attorney are used) and an exhibit index. There is no separate prospectus inside the F-3MEF.
  • EX-5.1 opinion of counsel. A legality opinion from the registrant's counsel (frequently local-jurisdiction counsel for the foreign issuer, such as British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, or Bermuda counsel) addressing the validity of the additional securities being registered, with assumptions, qualifications, governing-law statement, signature block, and dating at the foot of the document.
  • EX-23.x auditor consents. Short letters from the registrant's independent registered public accounting firm (and, where relevant, the auditor of any predecessor entity, business combination target, or significant equity-method investee) consenting to incorporation by reference of their audit report into the F-3MEF and the parent F-3. Multiple consents are common when the issuer's recent financial history involves more than one auditor or when predecessor financials are part of the registration.
  • EX-107 filing-fee exhibit. The Rule 457 calculation of the additional registration fee, expressed since 2022 as an inline-XBRL fee table conforming to the SEC's ffd taxonomy. The exhibit references the parent Form F-3 file number and reports security type, amount registered, proposed maximum offering price per unit and in aggregate, fee rate, fee paid, and any offsets.
  • Other exhibits. EX-24 (powers of attorney), additional legal opinions, or tax opinions occasionally appear; they follow the same SGML-wrapped HTML convention as the primary document.

Included content

Each record includes metadata.json plus every human-readable document file from the original EDGAR submission: the F-3MEF primary, all opinion and consent exhibits, any powers of attorney, and the EX-107 inline-XBRL fee exhibit. Where the registrant submitted a document as plain ASCII text inside the SGML envelope, the corresponding .txt is preserved with its SGML wrapper intact. The metadata file is itself a complete, self-describing inventory of the original submission, so even items that are not extracted to disk can be located and retrieved by URL.

Excluded or separate content

Three categories of material referenced in metadata.documentFormatFiles and metadata.dataFiles are intentionally not written to disk. First, GRAPHIC-type entries — typically signature images, logos, or scanned exhibits in .jpg, .gif, or .png format — are omitted in line with the dataset's image-exclusion policy. Second, the bundled complete-submission text file (the <accession>.txt that concatenates the entire SGML submission) is referenced in documentFormatFiles with a sentinel space " " for sequence but is not written to disk; the canonical SGML payload can still be retrieved from linkToTxt on SEC.gov. Third, the extracted XBRL XML side-file for the EX-107 exhibit (referenced under dataFiles) is not extracted — the inline-XBRL content remains embedded inside the EX-107 HTML document, which is on disk.

The parent Form F-3 registration statement is also not bundled into the F-3MEF record. Because Rule 411 incorporation by reference is the entire substantive mechanism of the F-3MEF, the prospectus, base disclosures, financial statements, and most exhibits live in a separate accession (the parent F-3) and must be retrieved separately if full disclosure context is required. The fileNo field on entities[] (a 333--series Securities Act file number) is the join key back to that parent registration.

Evolution of required content and structure

The required content of an F-3MEF has remained narrow since the form's introduction in the late 1990s — Rule 462(b) has always demanded only registrant identification, the additional-securities calculation, the fee computation, and the customary validity opinion plus expert consents. The most consequential structural change has been to the fee exhibit. Through 2021, the fee table was presented as plain narrative or HTML inside the F-3MEF primary document or as a non-structured EX-107 attachment. Following SEC adoption of the Filing Fee Disclosure and Payment Methods Modernization rule (Release 33-11062, effective 2022 with phased compliance dates), F-3MEF filings began carrying a separate EX-FILING FEES exhibit (EDGAR type 107) containing a structured, machine-readable Rule 457 fee table tagged in inline XBRL against the SEC's ffd taxonomy. Records dated from the 2022 compliance date forward show this EX-107 file in the accession folder; earlier records do not.

Eligibility rules for Form F-3 — and therefore for F-3MEF — have also changed several times (most notably the WKSI framework and the broadening of primary-offering eligibility for smaller foreign issuers in the late 2000s). These changes do not alter the anatomy of an individual F-3MEF record but do affect which issuers appear in the dataset over time.

Evolution of source-file format

Filings from the late 1990s and early 2000s commonly arrived as ASCII text inside the SGML <DOCUMENT> envelope, with hand-formatted fee tables and narrative cover pages. By the mid-2000s the document payload shifted to HTML wrapped in the same SGML envelope, which is the dominant convention in the dataset today. The SGML <DOCUMENT>/<TEXT> wrapper itself has remained stable across the entire coverage window; what changed inside it was the migration from line-printer ASCII to fully styled HTML.

The 2022 rollout of the inline-XBRL fee exhibit introduced the only material structural break in the dataset's file-format history. Modern F-3MEF accessions carry a hybrid: SGML-wrapped HTML for the registration statement and traditional exhibits, and a standalone iXBRL XHTML document for the EX-107 fee table that is not SGML-wrapped and that declares the ix, ffd, and dei namespaces directly on its <html> element.

Interpretation notes

Several patterns matter for downstream extraction. The SGML envelope on the non-fee documents must be stripped before strict HTML/XML parsing; the trailing </TEXT></DOCUMENT> lines are part of every such file. The EX-107 fee exhibit is the inverse case — it is valid XHTML+iXBRL and should be parsed with an XML-aware tool to recover the structured fee facts. The documentFormatFiles[].sequence field is the authoritative ordering key for reassembling the submission and is not encoded in filenames; the space-sentinel " " row marks the bundled complete-submission .txt and should be filtered out when iterating real attachments.

The entities[].fileNo field is the most important cross-reference in the record: it always begins 333- and identifies the parent Form F-3 registration that the F-3MEF is supplementing. Joining on this field links each F-3MEF record back to its base prospectus and the bulk of its substantive disclosure. For foreign issuers, irsNo is commonly "000000000" and stateOfIncorporation uses a two-character EDGAR country code (e.g., D8 for the British Virgin Islands, E9 for the Cayman Islands, M0 for Bermuda); these are not malformed values but EDGAR's compact jurisdiction encoding. SIC strings preserve HTML entity encoding from the source EDGAR header (&amp; rather than &), which should be normalized before display. Finally, because F-3MEF is effective on filing, effectivenessDate and the date portion of filedAt are always equal — there is no pending-effectiveness state to model.

Who Files or Publishes This Dataset, and When

Who files the record

Form F-3MEF is filed by the registrant itself, which must be a foreign private issuer (FPI) already eligible to use Form F-3. The "F" form family is restricted to FPIs as defined in Securities Act Rule 405 and Exchange Act Rule 3b-4: an issuer organized outside the United States whose U.S. ownership, U.S. management presence, U.S. asset location, and place of business administration fall below the thresholds set in those rules.

To file F-3MEF, the FPI must also satisfy Form F-3 registrant eligibility, including:

  • a sufficient Section 13(a) or Section 15(d) reporting history,
  • timely filing of all required Exchange Act reports for the prior twelve months, and
  • the applicable transaction-specific tests (public float, investment-grade non-convertible debt, WKSI status, secondary offering, rights offering, dividend reinvestment, or conversion).

Underwriters, selling securityholders, U.S. authorized representatives, and counsel may be named or signed within the document, but the filer of record on EDGAR is the FPI registrant. Counsel typically supplies the legality opinion exhibit; this does not make counsel the filer.

When the record is created or required

Form F-3MEF is an event-driven, same-day filing triggered by Rule 462(b) under the Securities Act of 1933. Rule 462(b) lets an issuer register additional securities of the same class as those on a currently effective registration statement, up to 20% of the maximum aggregate offering price in the parent statement's "Calculation of Registration Fee" table.

The triggering event is a late-stage upsize of an F-3 offering: pricing or final allocation produces, or is about to produce, sales exceeding the originally registered amount. Operational timing rules:

  • Latest filing time: before confirmations of sale are sent for the additional securities. In practice this means the pricing date itself, often within minutes of pricing.
  • Effectiveness: automatic upon filing. No SEC review, no acceleration request, no waiting period.
  • Fee: the registration fee for the additional securities (calculated under Rule 457(o) where applicable) is paid concurrently with the filing.
  • Cover page: must mark the Rule 462(b) checkbox and identify the parent Form F-3 by its 333- Securities Act file number.
  • Signatures: match Form F-3 requirements (registrant, principal executive, financial, and accounting officers, a majority of directors, and the FPI's authorized U.S. representative).

There is no periodic schedule and no amendment cadence. A given offering produces at most one F-3MEF, and most F-3 takedowns produce none. The dataset reflects this rare-event character.

Important distinctions

  • F-3MEF vs. S-3MEF. F-3MEF is the FPI counterpart to the domestic S-3MEF. Domestic U.S. issuers cannot file F-3MEF; they use S-3MEF off a parent Form S-3.
  • Parent must be Form F-3. An FPI upsizing a Form F-1 offering files Form F-1MEF; an FPI upsizing a Form F-4 offering files Form F-4MEF. Rule 462(b) is the common mechanism, but each MEF form is keyed to a specific parent.
  • 20% ceiling, aggregate offering price. Measured against the parent's fee table dollar amount, not share count. Overages beyond 20% require a conventional new registration statement and cannot use Rule 462(b).
  • Same class only. The additional securities must be of the same class as those registered on the parent F-3.
  • Not a prospectus supplement. F-3MEF registers additional securities; the actual offering disclosure flows through the Rule 424 prospectus supplement tied to the parent F-3.
  • Amendments (F-3MEF/A). Permitted but uncommon; typically address mechanical defects rather than substantive disclosure.
  • Liability still applies. Automatic effectiveness does not relieve the registrant or signatories of Section 11 and Section 12 liability for the F-3MEF contents and for material incorporated by reference from the parent F-3.

How This Dataset Differs From Similar Datasets or Filings

Form F-3MEF is a narrow Rule 462(b) "magic effective" filing layered on an already-effective Form F-3 by a foreign private issuer. The most useful comparisons are with its domestic counterpart, its parent registration, the prospectus supplements that govern actual takedowns, and the other Rule 462(b) MEF siblings. Each can be confused with F-3MEF or used alongside it, but none substitutes for it.

Form S-3MEF — domestic counterpart

The direct analog for U.S. domestic issuers. Mechanics are identical: Rule 462(b), immediate effectiveness on filing, 20% ceiling on additional securities, minimal content (cover, fee table, incorporation references). The sole boundary is filer eligibility — S-3MEF for domestic registrants tied to an S-3, F-3MEF for foreign private issuers tied to an F-3. Capturing all Rule 462(b) top-ups requires both datasets.

Form F-3 — the parent registration statement

F-3 is the underlying short-form shelf that F-3MEF expands. The relationship is hierarchical, not substitutive. F-3 carries the substantive disclosure (business description by incorporation from Form 20-F, risk factors, plan of distribution, registered amounts, full prospectus). F-3MEF carries almost none of that — it is an administrative top-up that raises the registration ceiling mid-pricing. For deal content, pull the parent F-3; F-3MEF is most useful as an event marker signaling the issuer outgrew the original capacity.

Form F-3ASR — automatic shelf for WKSI foreign filers

Form F-3ASR also becomes effective immediately, but through Rule 462(e) automatic effectiveness for well-known seasoned issuers, with no 20% cap and pay-as-you-go fees. WKSI foreign filers can add securities via post-effective amendments and rarely need an F-3MEF. In practice the two are mutually exclusive: F-3ASR for WKSI foreign filers, F-3MEF for non-WKSI foreign filers using a non-automatic F-3 who hit the ceiling during a live deal.

Form F-1MEF — Rule 462(b) for the long-form foreign registration

Same 462(b) mechanics as F-3MEF (cover, fee table, immediate effectiveness, 20% cap), but tops up an F-1 rather than an F-3. F-1 is the full-disclosure registration used by foreign issuers ineligible for the short-form shelf registration, so F-1MEF typically attaches to IPO-style or first-time SEC offerings, while F-3MEF attaches to seasoned shelf takedowns. Treat them as parallel siblings inside the foreign-issuer 462(b) family.

Form F-4MEF — Rule 462(b) for business combinations

The same 462(b) top-up mechanism applied to Form F-4, which registers securities issued in business combinations, exchange offers, and reorganizations involving foreign issuers. F-3MEF tops up cash-raising shelf takedowns that overshoot; F-4MEF tops up share-issuance transactions where the deal value or exchange ratio drives the share count above what the original F-4 covered. Mechanics overlap; transaction types do not.

Rule 424(b) prospectus supplements (424B series)

The most common point of confusion. 424(b) supplements (424B1424B7) are filed for every shelf takedown and contain pricing, deal terms, underwriters, and final offering disclosure. F-3MEF is filed only when a takedown would exceed the original F-3 ceiling. The typical sequence: issuer prices the offering, realizes the ceiling will be breached, files F-3MEF to add up to 20% more capacity, then files the 424(b) supplement reflecting the full deal. 424(b) describes the offering; F-3MEF authorizes the extra capacity that makes part of it possible.

What makes this dataset distinct

Form F-3MEF sits at the intersection of three constraints that no other form satisfies simultaneously: foreign private issuer eligibility, an F-3 (not F-1, not F-4) as the underlying registration, and the Rule 462(b) ceiling-raising mechanic capped at 20%. The filings are short, structurally uniform, and almost always paired with a contemporaneous 424(b) supplement and a referenced parent F-3. Population is sparse, so the dataset is best treated as a precise event marker in shelf-offering research, joined to the parent F-3 and 424(b) supplements when substantive deal content is needed.

Who Uses This Dataset

The user base for the F-3MEF Files Dataset is small and specialized, reflecting the narrow regulatory event the form encodes — a last-minute top-up registration by an FPI in the final hours before pricing or on a greenshoe exercise.

ECM bankers and syndicate desks

Cross-border ECM origination and syndicate desks use the fee calculation table — additional shares or principal, proposed maximum offering price, and incremental aggregate offering — to size historical upsize and greenshoe activity by FPIs. Joined to the parent F-3 file number, the records support pitch comps on book-building strength and internal heuristics on when to size an initial F-3 conservatively.

Securities and underwriter's counsel

Issuer-side disclosure counsel and underwriter's counsel preparing 462(b) packages rely on prior F-3MEF filings as same-day drafting precedent. They focus on cover-page recitals identifying the predecessor F-3, the fee table form for the incremental securities, the legality opinion (including home-country counsel where applicable), and re-filed auditor or expert consents. The dataset confirms peer conventions for U.S. authorized-representative signatures and exhibit incorporation.

Securities counsel and legal-ops teams at FPIs with active F-3 shelves track how peers manage the 20% cap, cumulative registered amounts, and the timing gap between parent F-3 effectiveness and the F-3MEF filing. The records validate internal shelf-management checklists against market-tested precedent.

Equity research and event-driven analysts

Fundamental analysts covering FPIs and event-driven desks treat F-3MEF filings as a clean machine-detectable signal of an upsized offering. The registrant CIK, security class, additional registered amount, and filing timestamp (typically within hours of pricing) feed share-count and dilution models, borrow assumptions, and post-pricing overhang analysis.

Academic and policy researchers

Researchers on cross-border capital raising, the U.S. listing premium, and shelf-registration mechanics use the dataset as a complete population of an unusual event type. Country of incorporation, entity metadata, and the F-3-to-F-3MEF time gap support empirical work on FPI book-building, regional and sector issuance cycles, and the economics of Rule 462(b).

Data engineers building issuance analytics

Engineering teams building dilution trackers and EDGAR-derived issuance feeds use the dataset as a self-contained corpus. Accession-level metadata (CIK, accession number, filing date, form type) provides clean keys; the HTML and TXT documents support extraction of the fee table and parent F-3 reference. The bounded size makes it useful for end-to-end testing of FPI-aware parsers and link resolution between F-3, F-3MEF, and 424B accessions for the same deal.

PE, VC, and M&A diligence teams

Diligence teams reviewing cross-border issuers reconstruct dilution-event timelines from the incremental registered amount, security class, and filing date, then reconcile reported share-count growth at an FPI against what was actually registered at deal time.

The dataset's value lies in being a complete, well-keyed record of a narrow regulatory event — last-minute top-up registrations by foreign private issuers — rather than a broad disclosure corpus. That makes it directly usable for upsize benchmarking, same-day drafting precedent, shelf compliance, dilution detection, FPI research, issuance analytics, and capital-history diligence.

Specific Use Cases

The Form F-3MEF dataset is narrow by design, so its strongest use cases treat each record as a precise event marker, joined to parent F-3 and 424(b) filings when deeper context is needed.

1. Upsize and greenshoe benchmarking for FPI shelf takedowns

Parse the EX-107 inline-XBRL fee exhibit (ffd:RegnFileNb, security class, amount registered, proposed maximum aggregate offering price, fee paid) across all records to produce a historical table of incremental capacity added by foreign issuers in the final hours before pricing. Bucket by SIC, country of incorporation (stateOfIncorporation codes such as D8, E9, M0), and parent F-3 file number to support ECM pitch comps on book-building strength and to calibrate how often initial F-3 sizings get topped to the 20% cap.

2. Same-day 462(b) drafting precedent for securities counsel

Pull the F-3MEF primary document and EX-5.1 opinion from records filed by issuers in the same home jurisdiction (Cayman, BVI, Bermuda, Israel, etc.) to crib cover-page recitals identifying the predecessor F-3, U.S. authorized-representative signature blocks, and local-counsel legality-opinion qualifications. The EX-23.x consents and exhibit index in each accession folder serve as a checklist for which auditor consents and powers of attorney peers re-file at top-up.

3. Event-driven dilution and overhang signals

Use filedAt (which equals effectivenessDate for every F-3MEF) plus entities[].cik and tickers to emit a real-time signal that an FPI has added up to 20% of additional securities mid-pricing. Feed the EX-107 amount-registered field into share-count models, borrow-cost assumptions, and post-pricing overhang estimates for affected tickers, and join on entities[].fileNo to surface the matching 424(b) supplement with final pricing terms.

4. Reconstructing full deal packages by joining on parent F-3 file number

Treat entities[].fileNo (the 333- Securities Act number of the parent F-3) as the join key to assemble the three-filing tuple — parent F-3, F-3MEF, and contemporaneous 424(b) supplement — for each upsized FPI takedown. The resulting linked records support diligence reconstructions of cross-border issuance histories, reconciliation of reported share-count growth against what was actually registered, and academic study of the time gap between F-3 effectiveness and 462(b) top-up.

5. End-to-end testing for EDGAR ingestion pipelines

Because the corpus is small, structurally uniform, and covers the only material EDGAR format break of the last decade (the 2022 iXBRL fee-exhibit migration), it works well as a regression fixture for FPI-aware parsers. Engineering teams test SGML envelope stripping on the F-3MEF and EX-5.1 files, inline-XBRL fact extraction against the ffd taxonomy on EX-107, and link resolution between F-3, F-3MEF, and 424B accessions — all without the volume of broader EDGAR corpora.

6. Empirical research on Rule 462(b) usage by foreign issuers

Use the dataset as a near-complete population of FPI 462(b) events to study issuance cycles by region and sector, the WKSI/non-WKSI split (F-3MEF users are by construction non-WKSI on a non-automatic F-3), and the economics of last-minute top-ups versus larger initial shelf sizings. Country code, SIC, fiscal-year end, and the F-3-to-F-3MEF interval supply the covariates; the bounded population size makes the dataset tractable for hand-validated empirical work.

Dataset Access

Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-f3mef-files.json

This endpoint returns the dataset metadata, the download URL for the full archive, and a list of all container files with per-container size, record count, updated timestamp, and download URL. It can be polled regularly to detect which monthly containers were refreshed in the most recent run, so downstream pipelines only re-download the containers that actually changed. No API key is required to call this endpoint.

Example response:

Example
1 {
2 "datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-6a36-8e3f-1b34520efea6",
3 "datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-f3mef-files.zip",
4 "name": "Form F-3MEF Files Dataset",
5 "updatedAt": "2026-04-16T08:36:25.514Z",
6 "earliestSampleDate": "1999-09-01",
7 "totalRecords": 193,
8 "totalSize": 632587,
9 "formTypes": ["F-3MEF"],
10 "containerFormat": "ZIP",
11 "fileTypes": ["TXT", "JSON", "HTML"],
12 "containers": [
13 {
14 "downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-f3mef-files/2026/2026-03.zip",
15 "key": "2026/2026-03.zip",
16 "size": 13818783,
17 "records": 154,
18 "updatedAt": "2026-03-21T02:51:19.000Z"
19 }
20 ]
21 }

Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-f3mef-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads the complete Form F-3MEF dataset as a single ZIP archive covering all filings from September 1999 to the latest refresh. This endpoint requires a valid sec-api.io API key.

Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-f3mef-files/2026/2026-03.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Downloads one monthly container ZIP rather than the full archive, which is useful for incremental updates or backfilling a specific period. Containers are organized by year and month under the dataset path. This endpoint requires a valid sec-api.io API key.

Frequently Asked Questions

What form does this dataset cover?

The dataset covers Form F-3MEF, the short-form Securities Act registration statement filed by a foreign private issuer under Rule 462(b) to register up to an additional 20% of securities for an offering already covered by a previously effective Form F-3.

What does one record in this dataset represent?

One record corresponds to a single F-3MEF accession-numbered EDGAR submission. Physically it is an accession-number folder containing a filing-level metadata.json plus the human-readable document files from the original submission — typically the F-3MEF primary document, an EX-5.1 legality opinion, one or more EX-23.x auditor consents, and an EX-107 inline-XBRL filing-fee exhibit.

Who is required to file Form F-3MEF?

Only foreign private issuers (FPIs) that already meet Form F-3 eligibility may file F-3MEF, and only when a late-stage upsize causes an F-3 takedown to exceed the originally registered amount. Domestic U.S. issuers in the same situation file Form S-3MEF instead.

When does an F-3MEF become effective?

An F-3MEF is effective automatically the moment EDGAR accepts the submission, with no SEC review, no acceleration request, and no waiting period. Every record in the dataset carries an effectivenessDate equal to the calendar date of filedAt.

What time period does the dataset cover, and how is it refreshed?

Coverage begins on 1 September 1999 and continues through the latest refresh. Records are distributed as monthly ZIP archives keyed YYYY/YYYY-MM.zip; the dataset index endpoint reports per-container updatedAt timestamps so downstream pipelines can fetch only the containers that have changed.

What file format is the dataset distributed in?

The dataset is distributed as ZIP containers. Each accession folder contains a metadata.json plus document files in the original EDGAR formats: SGML-wrapped HTML or TXT for the F-3MEF primary and traditional exhibits, and a standalone inline-XBRL XHTML document for the EX-107 fee exhibit. Image attachments (GRAPHIC-type entries) and the bundled complete-submission .txt are not extracted to disk.

How does this dataset differ from Form S-3MEF or the parent Form F-3?

Form S-3MEF is the domestic-issuer analog of F-3MEF; the two share identical Rule 462(b) mechanics but differ on filer eligibility (domestic vs. foreign private issuer). The parent Form F-3 carries the substantive disclosure — prospectus, risk factors, plan of distribution — while F-3MEF is an administrative top-up that raises the registration ceiling. To assemble a complete deal package, join an F-3MEF record to its parent F-3 and the contemporaneous Rule 424(b) prospectus supplement using the 333- file number on entities[].fileNo.