Conflict Minerals: Disclosures Put Conflict Minerals on Companies' Agenda

Jun 6, 2014 | David Nicklaus, STL Today
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An African civil war isn’t usually a top-of-mind business concern for a St. Louis chemical company, but this week Sigma-Aldrich paid close attention to violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

So did more than a thousand other U.S. companies, all of which had to report on whether their products contained minerals whose profits might have supported armed rebels in the African country.

Advocacy groups had been pushing for years for more information about so-called conflict minerals, and a disclosure requirement was included in the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. Companies’ first filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission were due Monday.