Bob's Upticks

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3102056181_031bf572a9_zIn the wake of the election of Donald Trump as the next President, there has been a lot of speculation about the effect of a Trump administration on securities law and corporate governance.  Looking into a crystal ball is always risky, but here are some observations.

Conflict Minerals:  It’s too soon to tell whether Dodd-Frank will be repealed in its entirety, if it will die the death of 1,000 cuts, or if it will stay pretty much as is.  What I will say is that few will cry if the conflict minerals provisions are eliminated (and I will not be among those few).  Complying with the conflict minerals rules is time-consuming  (and therefore costly), and it’s questionable whether many people care.  Perhaps of equal or greater importance is that there is some evidence that the conflict minerals requirements are actually hurting the people they were supposed to help.

Pay Ratio: More of the same here.  There is some support for pay ratio disclosure among labor pension funds, but that’s about it.  Companies don’t like it (duh…), and mainstream investors have no use for it.  Given how the Democrats seem to have fared in the industrial states, it’s not clear that they would fall on their collective sword to save this one.
Continue Reading The SEC’s brave new (Trump) world

The morning after a surprising election outcome seems as good a time as any to bear in mind the old saw that the more things change the more they stay the same.

And so it goes with corporate governance trends.  Lost in the piles of paper and ink (real and virtual) expended on the Wells Fargo scandal is an article that appeared in The Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago suggesting that the beleaguered bank will benefit from its post-oops decision to separate the positions of CEO and Chairman of the Board.

I’ve studied this issue for several years, and I can state with confidence that there is no proof that separating the positions or having an independent Board Chair does anything to improve performance or to avoid problems.  The most that can be said is that the studies are inconclusive.Continue Reading CEO/Chair separation — the more things change…

3003307653_f29d6e3b0c_zIf you’ve been reading our posts (and probably even if you haven’t), you should know by now that the SEC has launched a “disclosure effectiveness” initiative and has already taken actions to make some disclosures more “effective”.  One such action was the publication of a 341-page “concept” release asking hundreds of questions about whether and how to address a wide range of disclosure issues.  More recently, the SEC has proposed rule changes that would eliminate some particularly pesky disclosure burdens.
Continue Reading Moving Rapidly into the 90s

The United Kingdom has a new Prime Minister.  Her name is Theresa May, and she’s a member of the

Photo by Scott P
Photo by Scott P

Conservative Party.  Remember that, because what you are about to read will probably lead you to think otherwise.

In a speech made a couple of days before Ms. May became Prime Minister, she said that she would pursue the following actions if she were to become Prime Minister:
Continue Reading What happens in England

4532941987_9004c36616_mIn a June 27 speech to the International Corporate Governance Network, SEC Chair Mary Jo White engaged in a bit of full disclosure herself:

“I can report today that the staff is preparing a recommendation to the Commission to propose amending the rule to require companies to include in their proxy statements more meaningful board diversity disclosures on their board members and nominees where that information is voluntarily self-reported by directors.”

As noted in her remarks, the SEC adopted the current disclosure requirements on board diversity in 2009.  However, the requirements were added to other board-related disclosure requirements at the last minute, when it was reported that Commissioner Aguilar refused to support the other requirements unless diversity disclosure was also mandated.  As a result, the diversity requirements were never subjected to public comment, did not define “diversity,” and seemed to require disclosure only if the company had a diversity “policy”.   When companies failed to provide the disclosure because they had no policy, the SEC clarified that if diversity was a factor in director selection then, in fact, the company would be deemed to have a policy, thus requiring disclosure.Continue Reading Coming soon to an SEC filing near you: board diversity (but not sustainability…for now)

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© Michael Sutton-Long

In recent weeks, the SEC has given public companies some new menu items, including the following:

  • On June 1, the SEC adopted an “interim final rule” that permits companies to include a summary of business and financial information in Annual Reports on Form 10-K.  The rule implements a provision of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, or FAST Act, in keeping with the new trend to give statutes names that someone thinks make nifty acronyms. (Of course, the connection between this rule and surface transportation remains a mystery.)
  • On June 13, the SEC issued an order permitting companies to file financial statement data in a format known as “Inline XBRL” rather than filing such data in exhibits to a filing.

Here is a quick review of these new menu items.

The new, improved 10-K summary – The rule permitting a 10-K summary is interesting in several respects.  First, companies have long been able to provide summaries; in other words, there doesn’t seem to have been any reason for the “new” rule.  Second, as noted, it permits but does not require the use of summaries; thus, companies that have not provided summaries in the past and don’t want to now don’t have to.
Continue Reading The SEC’s summer menu

It’s almost exactly one year to the day since I took Senator Elizabeth Warren to task for what I believed was an unwarranted and particularly vicious attack on the SEC – or, rather, Chair White’s tenure at the SEC.  Apparently, Senator Warren decided to celebrate the anniversary with another attack on the SEC and Chair White at a Senate Banking Committee hearing.  (You can watch the entire unpleasantness here, including Senator Warren’s refusal to allow Chair White to answer any of her questions before launching another attack.)

This time, the attack was directed to the SEC’s “effective disclosure” project – something that many companies and investors support – claiming that by pursuing this project the SEC is putting companies’ interests ahead of investor protection and demanding that Chair White provide evidence to justify that investors are suffering from information overload.  Her comments to Chair White included the following: “Your job is too look out for investors, but you have put the interests of the Chamber of Commerce and their big business members at the top of your priority list.”

Really?  Perhaps Ms. Warren should ask some investors to testify.  She might learn that many investors do not read disclosure documents, particularly proxy statements (which will soon contain the pay ratio disclosures that she once said should be the SEC’s highest priority), because they are too long and investors just don’t have the time.  She might also learn that many investors applaud the SEC’s initiative, because it is designed to enhance some disclosures rather than just eliminate them. 
Continue Reading Senator Warren strikes again

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©killaee

Over the years, the PCAOB has developed a reputation for pursuing zombie proposals – proposals that appear to be dead due to widespread opposition and even congressional action.  Remember mandatory auditor rotation?  It practically took a stake through the heart to kill that one off, and I’m informed that even after it was presumed to be long gone some PCAOB spokespersons were telling European regulators that it might yet be adopted.

Well, here we go again.  The latest zombie proposal (OK, reproposal) would modify the standard audit report in a number of respects, the most significant of which would be to require disclosure of “critical audit matters”.  The headline of the PCAOB’s announcement of the reproposal says that it would “enhance” the auditor’s report; not clarify, just “enhance”.   And, as is customary whenever the PCAOB proposes to change the fundamental nature of the audit report, the proposal starts out by sayng that’s not the intention at all: “The reproposal would retain the pass/fail model of the existing auditor’s report,” it says.  It seems to me to lead to the opposite result – the introduction of critical audit matter (“CAM”) disclosure could easily lead to qualitative audit reports; one CAM would be viewed as a “high pass”, two would be ranked as a medium pass, and so on, possibly even resulting in numerical “grades” based upon the number of CAMs in the audit report.  And let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that any audit firm would ever issue a clean – i.e., CAM-free – opinion.  I just can’t envision that happening, ever.Continue Reading Another zombie from the PCAOB

bob-upticks-feature

Until recently, I’ve firmly believed that the SEC’s use of the bully pulpit can be effective in getting companies to act – or refrain from acting – in a certain way.  Speeches by Commissioners and members of the SEC Staff usually have an impact on corporate behavior.  However, the use of non-GAAP financial information – or, more correctly, the improper use of such information – seems to persist despite jawboning, rulemaking and other attempts to stifle the practice.

Concerns about the (mis)use of non-GAAP information are not new.  In fact, abuses in the late 1990s and early 2000s led the SEC to adopt Regulation G in 2003.  It’s hard to believe that Reg G has been around for 13+ years, but at the same time it seems as though people have been ignoring it ever since it was adopted.  Over the last few months, members of the SEC and its Staff have devoted a surprising amount of time to jawboning about the misuse of non-GAAP information; for example, the SEC’s Chief Accountant discussed these concerns in March 2016; the Deputy Chief Accountant spoke about the problem in early May 2016; and SEC Chair White raised the subject in a speech in December 2015.  And yet, the problem seems to persist.Continue Reading Mind the GAAP

On April 13, the SEC authorized the issuance of a major concept release. Concept releases are trial balloons that the SEC publishes to elicit input on possible rulemaking, including whether rulemaking is needed and what form it should take if it happens. The April 13 concept release is entitled “Business and Financial Disclosure Required by Regulation S-K”. Given that Regulation S-K spells out many of the disclosure requirements applicable to all sorts of Exchange Act filings, it’s bound to be significant.

The concept release is a very large trial balloon indeed – it runs to nearly 350 pages – and I have yet to crack it open. However, I do intend to read it. And I urge you to do the same, as it’s likely to impact disclosure requirements for the next generation.

Some preliminary thoughts about the concept release, based upon press reports and the opening statements made by the Commissioners during the meeting at which the release was approved for publication:
Continue Reading Another SEC concept release