In 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Conflict Minerals: It’s too soon to tell whether Dodd-Frank will be repealed in its entirety, if it will die the death of 1,000 cuts, or if it will stay pretty much as is.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