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Hating lawyers may not have started with Shakespeare, but he didn’t help things when he wrote “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” in Henry VI.  Any lawyer who’s been practicing law for more than a couple of weeks knows that part of the price of bar admission is having to endure lawyer jokes (most of which aren’t very good) and experiences like having a client say to you at the outset of your first meeting, “just so you know, I don’t like lawyers” or words to that effect.

It’s particularly painful, however, when an attack on our profession comes from one of our own, who also happens to be a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission.  I refer to a March 4 speech by Commissioner Allison Herren Lee in which she notes her “deep regard for the ideals of public service that our profession represents” and that her “belief in the ideals of the profession – ideals I know you all share – has only grown stronger with time” but then goes on to castigate corporate lawyers for failing to fulfill our “role…as gatekeepers in the capital markets.”  She distinguishes corporate lawyers from litigators – a dubious distinction that suggests we should be less zealous in representing our clients than our litigation colleagues – and says that in passing Section 307 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (more on that below) “Congress was concerned…that counsel often acted in the interests of the executives who hired them rather than the company and its shareholders to whom their duty and responsibility is [sic] owed.” Continue Reading Who needs Shakespeare when you’ve got the SEC?

I hope you will forgive me for this digression when there are so many things to talk about in our wacky worlds of securities law and corporate governance.  However, though I am tempted to rant about the SEC’s proposals on climate change and cybersecurity disclosures, I’ll save that for another day.  Today, I have decided to take a few minutes to reminisce about my encounters with Madeleine Albright, who died this week.

Yes, my encounters.  Plural.

I first met Secretary Albright when she was the United States Ambassador to the United Nations.  Our UN ambassadors’ official residence then and, I believe, now is a suite high up in the Waldorf Tower, a relatively exclusive building adjacent to the famous Waldorf-Astoria on Park Avenue in New York.  One of our daughters had just run in her first New York Marathon, and my wife and I had flown up from Florida, hired a car for the day, and had the wonderful experience of seeing her run in each of the five boroughs of New York City.  We had also purchased VIP tickets so that we could be in the stands next to the finish line in Central Park and see her complete the race.  It was an exhilarating day.

Continue Reading A Reminiscence

Remember those three monkeys – see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil?  Well, that’s kind of how the SEC views the internet and social media.  Time after time after time, the SEC has cautioned that social media are fraught, to the point that I sometimes wonder if there is a watermark, visible only to securities lawyers, in every SEC pronouncement about the web and social media that says “PROCEED AT YOUR PERIL!”  And, unfortunately, many (too many, IMHO) SEC attorneys follow the SEC’s lead and either don’t encourage or actively discourage clients from taking advantage of the opportunities afforded by technology.

An example may be helpful.  Several years ago, when I was in-house, we decided to include in our proxy statement a live link to something on our website.  When we sent our draft proxy statement to outside counsel for the customary rules check, one of the comments we received was a strong admonition to remove the link or at least not make it “live.”  The rationale was that there might be something on our website that we wouldn’t put in an Exchange Act filing and that the link would somehow suck all that bad stuff into the proxy statement and lead to liability. Continue Reading Note to SEC: The internet and social media are here – deal with it!

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It’s time for my annual posting on my 10 favorite books of the prior year.  In last year’s version, I said that 2020 was an “annus horribilis” – the term used by Queen Elizabeth following the death of Princess Diana.  Well, I don’t know how to say “2021 may have been even worse” in Latin, but being someone who searches for the bright side (possibly even when there isn’t one), I will say that I continue to be grateful for books.  I read voraciously, constantly, no matter how bogged down with work or other things I may be.  Books take me away from the world — not always to a better place, but even a negative distraction is a distraction.

So here goes.  Remember that my top 10 are all books that I read in 2021, not just books I read that were published in 2021. Continue Reading Another Year, Another Top Ten List

I suppose I should be getting tired of writing about enforcement actions involving nondisclosure of perquisites (for example, see here), and that you’re getting tired of reading about them.  However, the topic is hard to resist, whether due to schadenfreude (look it up) or other factors.

The most recent such enforcement action, announced in late November, told a story similar to those told before – a CEO who used corporate aircraft for personal travel, used corporate credit cards for personal expenses, and so on, resulting in a failure to disclose more than $425,000 in “perks” over a two-year period.  The CEO also pledged all of his company stock in violation of a shareholders agreement that required the prior written consent of the company, but that’s another story.  Suffice it to say that the company and the CEO were hit with a variety of charges, including a failure to maintain accurate books and records.

If this elicits yawns or eye-rolling that we’ve seen this movie before, so be it.  However, there is a twist.  Specifically, the SEC’s report noted that the CEO did not disclose the relevant information in his questionnaires – and in some cases had not completed a questionnaire at all.  I don’t recall the SEC focusing on the lowly D&O questionnaire in the past.  Anyone who has pulled his or her hair out trying to get a director or officer to complete a questionnaire is now smiling and saying “Ha!  It serves him right!”  (The same goes for all those directors and officers who complete every questionnaire by saying “please fill it out for me” or “no change from last year” regardless of whether there are changes.) Continue Reading Another perquisites enforcement action…with a twist or three

I’ve been known to make some weird connections in this blog, so if you’re wondering what’s with the title of this posting, read on.

Some years ago, my wife and I took a fabulous trip to Egypt.  One of the many fascinating things and people we learned about was Hatshepsut, a Pharaoh who ruled Egypt from 1479 to 1458 BC, or thereabouts.  She’s been called Queen Hatshepsut, but technically that’s not correct, because she was literally a Pharaoh – a title that our guides told us was an exclusively male title for which there was no female equivalent.

Hatshepsut is believed to have been a very successful leader, opening trade routes and creating a boom in the construction of many grand temples and so on – something one of our guides referred to as an “edifice complex.”  However, after her death, her son, Pharaoh Tutmosis III, and possibly his son (to say nothing of the patriarchy) sought to eradicate her existence.  Her name was removed from records and many of her statues and images were defaced or destroyed.

But enough ancient history. Continue Reading Why Is the SEC Like Pharaoh Tutmosis III?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The Nasdaq Stock Market has developed a reputation for being the hip securities exchange, technologically and otherwise.  In many ways, it deserves this reputation.  For example:

  • In 1991, Nasdaq became the world’s first electronic stock market.
  • In 1992, it joined with the London Stock Exchange to form the first intercontinental linkage of capital markets.
  • In 1998, using the slogan “the stock market for the next hundred years,” Nasdaq became the first U.S. stock market to trade online.
  • In 2016, Adena Friedman was promoted to chief executive officer, becoming the first woman to run a major exchange in the U.S.

So it is not particularly surprising that, once again, in August 2021, Nasdaq took center stage and became the first major stock exchange to adopt a board diversity rule for its listed companies.

WHY THIS RULE?  WHY NOW?

The answer to the first question is clear. Notwithstanding widespread acknowledgement by corporate America that board diversity leads to greater innovation, smarter decision-making, and improvements to the bottom line, actual board diversity remains elusive.  As of 2020, only 20.9% of Fortune 500 board seats were held by White women, and a mere 5.7% were held by Black and Latina women; and while 2021 saw gains of 300% in new directors who are Black and 200% gains in Latino directors, 80% of all Fortune 500 board members are White, and 70% are male.[1]  So even though the new rule will not create “instant” diversity, it will create measurable board diversity goals, forcing companies that have given lip service to diversity to act – or to disclose that they have failed to act.

Why now?  Personally, I ask, “Why not before?”  The answers to those questions, however, are beyond the scope of this blog.  For this moment, I am cautiously optimistic that Nasdaq’s new diversity rule can be a catalyst for meaningful change that leads to the bona fide board diversity that corporate America has been incapable of accomplishing thus far. Continue Reading Nasdaq’s Board Diversity Rule: The “Hip” Exchange Does It Again

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Lest you think that the summer is a quiet time for those of us in the wacky world of securities and corporate governance, think again.  Here’s some of what’s going on:

Legislation

On July 30, the House Financial Services Committee passed 11 bills and sent them to the full House. One of the bills would authorize the SEC to revise the reporting period for 13F disclosures from quarterly to monthly, change the time period to submit such reports, and expand the list of items to be disclosed to include certain derivatives.  The issuer and investment communities support these moves, and House passage seems likely, but the Senate is another matter altogether.

Another bill would impact family offices in a number of ways, including limiting the use of the family office exemption from registration as an investment adviser with the SEC to offices with $750 million or less in assets under management; requiring family offices with more than $750 million of assets under management to register with the SEC as “exempt reporting advisers”; and preventing persons who are barred or subject to final orders for conduct constituting fraud, manipulation, or deceit from being associated with a family office. Continue Reading Summer Doldrums? Not So Much!

Remind me again, what’s Section 162(m)?

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

In general, Section 162(m) of the Internal Revenue Code provides that a publicly held corporation shall not be allowed a deduction for any “applicable employee remuneration” to any “covered employee” that exceeds $1,000,000.  Applicable employee remuneration generally means compensation for services performed.  Though the definition has changed over time, “covered employee” originally captured a company’s CEO as of the last day of the taxable year, as well as the next three most highly compensated officers.

Insert the TCJA

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the “TCJA”) took the first stab at widening the net used to determine who is a “covered employee.”  Specifically, the definition was expanded to include any person who served as CEO or CFO during the taxable year, in addition to the next three most highly compensated officers.  Additionally, the definition was expanded to include any individual who was a “covered employee” for any taxable year beginning after December 31, 2016.  The TCJA also made other notable changes to Section 162(m), including the elimination of an exception for qualified “performance-based compensation” approved by stockholders.  The practical effect of this was to eliminate the need for stockholder votes to approve plans providing for “performance-based” compensation, because the compensation in question would be non-deductible whether or not it was performance-based. Continue Reading Run for “Covered!” The American Rescue Plan Act casts a wider net on Section 162(m) “Covered Employees”

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Popular cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase went public on Nasdaq on April 14 using a direct listing. The company achieved a huge valuation (more than $100 billion) in this offering. While it’s too early to tell whether Coinbase’s stock price will hold up over time, the initial success of this offering is impressive. This continues a string of successful direct listing offerings by large technology companies such as Slack, Spotify, Palantir and Asana, all of which utilized this process to become public companies. What is a direct listing and how is it better (or worse) than a traditional IPO? More importantly, should you use a direct listing to take your company public? (Spoiler alert:  maybe not).

Direct listing is a somewhat rare process in which a company achieves public company status without using traditional underwritten IPO sales efforts. Historically, only the company’s existing shareholders were allowed to sell shares in a direct listing. The company would not receive any of the proceeds of the offering as it would not be allowed to issue new shares, and accordingly all funds would go directly to the selling shareholders. On December 22, 2020, however, the SEC approved a rule change proposed by the NYSE that allows a company to conduct a primary offering through a direct listing under certain circumstances. Nasdaq later submitted a similar proposal which is currently under SEC review but which should be approved, as it is substantially similar to the NYSE proposal. This should fuel even more interest in direct listings going forward. Continue Reading Direct Listings – A viable IPO alternative?