New Ruling by SEC Mandates XBRL Adoption Makes ''XBRL for Dummies'' Sponsored by Hitachi XBRL Business Unit a Must-Have for Mastering XBRL and Financial Reporting

With the recent mandate by the Securities and Exchange Commission regarding the application of XBRL, knowing how to use this business reporting language is now a primary business imperative. Fortunately, "XBRL for Dummies” written by Hitachi XBRL experts Peter Weverka and Wilson So, Ph. D. packs in the information that financial professionals need to understand and know relating to XBRL and its deployment in today’s SEC-mandated financial reporting environment. Companies such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLC, Merrill Corp., and WACOAL, are adopting XBRL; however, general understanding of XBRL is far less common. In fact, a study last year by Grant Thornton LLP revealed that nearly one-half of senior finance executives are not aware of XBRL and nine in 10 believed that the accounting profession had not adequately communicated the benefits of XBRL for internal and external financial reporting. "XBRL for Dummies,” an 84-page book was designed to bring financial executives up-to-speed quickly and easily. "While XBRL is now being adopted primarily for financial reporting, powerful forces such as globalization, transparency, and competition are accelerating the trend towards its everyday use in overall company activities, such as manufacturing, procurement, sales, and human resources,” asserts Dr. So, director for Hitachi America, Ltd. XBRL Business Unit. To help businesspeople better understand its utility, the following parallels simply put XBRL into perspective: Reason #1: It’s the Napster of Investing. XBRL will make it just as easy for anyone to download information about public companies in a form they can immediately use. Reason #2: It’s Interactive Data. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox is quite fond of all of the things that you can make the numbers in a financial statement do with XBRL codes. Reason #3: It's the Democratization of Information. XBRL puts business information in the hands of individual investors. Now anyone can have instant access to accurate information and comparative analyses that previously only sophisticated research specialists could access. Reason #4: It's an Information Medium. XBRL is a medium of information exchange. Reason #5: It's the Universal Language of Business Information. There are many reporting languages, but XBRL speaks the same language to everyone. Reason #6: It's Standardized Business Information. Today, you have to unload and reload financial information from different sets of financial statements, different accounting systems, and different computer systems. XBRL makes all that unnecessary. Reason #7: It's Mistake Proof Information. XBRL is mistake proof because it allows you to pass information back and forth without any loss of accuracy or context. Reason #8: It's Agnostic Information. Just like XML, which is its parent language, it's happy to work with any platform or proprietary format. Reason #9: It's Barcoding for Information. XBRL lets preparers and users of financial information move numbers from place to place and track them wherever they go. Reason #10: It's an Information Recycling Method. The same number can be put to many different uses, over and over again. Reason #11: It's Information Reverse-Engineering. You can start with a big number like revenues, and take it apart to find out what it's made of. Copies of the book are only available online by visiting https://store.nationalmailing.com/xbrl/default.php?order. Each copy is free of charge; however, there is a small charge for postage and handling. ABOUT HITACHI HAL XBRL Business Unit delivers superior eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) solutions that improve corporate governance, restore shareholder confidence and enable market agility by delivering correct actionable data in real time. Hitachi is a pioneer in the development of XBRL products and services for the financial and business communities at large. In addition to developing its own offerings, Hitachi partners with other firms – including systems integrators, auditing firms, and service providers – to create innovative XBRL solutions. The company has working partnerships with Merrill Corporation and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Hitachi America, Ltd. XBRL Business Unit focuses on developing business relationships with four types of companies: those who want to reduce their time for financial analysis and reporting; those with multiple divisions that are in a merger/acquisition process; those trading on foreign or multinational exchanges; and those that want to be perceived as leaders in technology adoption. A copy of the business unit’s white paper "The XBRL-Enabled Company” can be downloaded at www.hitachi.us/XBRL. To enhance the XBRL conversation, Hitachi has launched Data Interactive, a blog to serve as a Speakers' Corner for the XBRL community. In addition to our own contributions, we invite guest bloggers from all areas of the interactive data world to contribute their take on the important challenges ahead. For more information, please visit www.hitachixbrl.com, or contact Hitachi at 1-888-HITACHI, or info@hitachixbrl.com. Hitachi America, Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., markets and manufactures a broad range of electronics, computer systems and products, and provides industrial equipment and services throughout North America. For more information, visit www.hitachi.us. Hitachi, Ltd., (NYSE:HIT) (TOKYO:6501), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is a leading global electronics company with approximately 390,000 employees worldwide. Fiscal 2007 (ended March 31, 2008) consolidated revenues totaled 11,226 billion Yen ($112.2 billion). The company offers a wide range of systems, products and services in market sectors including information systems, electronic devices, power and industrial systems, consumer products, materials, logistics and financial services. For more information on Hitachi, please visit the company's website at http://www.hitachi.com.