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On October 7, 2020, the SEC proposed the creation of “limited, conditional” exemptions from broker-dealer registration for certain “finders” in private company capital raising transactions. This has long been a problem area for private companies, as current regulations impose restrictions that may prevent them from using unregistered finders to raise capital, or impose draconian penalties on them if they do. Since these companies are often unable to raise capital on their own and normally do not have access to the efforts of established, registered broker dealers, the already difficult challenge of raising early stage capital is made even more difficult. The SEC’s October 7, 2020 Press Release and Fact Sheet lay out these proposed exemptions in detail, and the Fact Sheet contains links to a chart and a video that may be helpful.

It’s too early to tell if these proposed exemptions will be beneficial to small companies. Will they actually facilitate small companies’ ability to raise early stage capital? That remains to be seen, but it’s a positive sign that the SEC is expending at least some efforts to help small companies in their capital raising efforts.

Here are the high points of the proposed exemptions:
Continue Reading Will Finders Find Relief from SEC Restrictions?

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How did we get here?

On September 11, 2020, the SEC adopted new rules to “update and expand the statistical disclosures” that bank holding companies, banks, savings and loan holding companies, and savings and loan associations are required to provide to investors. The old regime – Industry Guide 3, “Statistical Disclosure by Bank Holding Companies” – had not been meaningfully updated for more than 30 years.  There have been all sorts of developments since then, including new accounting standards, a financial crisis, and new disclosure requirements imposed by banking agencies. So it’s not surprising that the SEC began questioning the need to make changes to Industry Guide 3, requesting comments in 2017 and again with a proposed rule in September 2019.

So, what’s new?

The changes were implemented in part to eliminate overlaps with disclosures already required under SEC rules, U.S. GAAP, and International Financial Reporting Standards (“IFRS”), as well as to incorporate new accounting standards. Under the new rules, disclosures are required for each annual period presented (as well as any additional interim period should a material change in the information or trend occur), aligning these disclosures with the annual periods for financial statements.
Continue Reading Out with the old, in with the new: Banks and S&Ls must now provide updated and expanded statistical disclosures

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On August 26, 2020, the SEC continued to keep its foot on the gas with respect to its recent practice of modernizing disclosure rules by adopting amendments to the description of business (Item 101), legal proceedings (Item 103), and risk factor disclosures (Item 105) that registrants are required to make pursuant to Regulation S-K. As discussed in a previous post by my colleague, Bob Lamm, regarding the rule changes as originally proposed on August 8, 2019, the changes significantly update the provisions of Regulation S-K and signal a continuing shift to a principles-based approach to disclosure. The SEC gave the green light to the amendments substantially as proposed in 2019, with some minor modifications. Details of the final amendments are included below. The previous post provides commentary on some of the rule changes and some observations regarding the potential impacts of the shift to a principles-based approach to disclosure on registrants and their advisors.

In its press release announcing the amendments, the SEC acknowledged that these updates were due – actually, overdue – after decades of evolution in the capital markets and the domestic and global economy without any corresponding revisions in the disclosure rules. SEC Chairman Jay Clayton stated that  the improvements to these rules “are rooted in materiality and seek to elicit information that will allow today’s investors to make more informed investment decisions,” adding that the revisions “add[] efficiency and flexibility to our disclosure framework.”
Continue Reading Pedal to the metal on principles-based disclosure

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On August 26, 2020, the SEC adopted changes to its definition of “accredited investor.” The SEC Release can be found here. The new rules will become effective 60 days after their publication in the Federal Register (around the end of October 2020). These changes are definitely a move in the right direction, and they indicate that the SEC may be willing to further expand and modernize the accredited investor qualification requirements, but I don’t believe they will have a significant impact on the private securities offering process. .

The accredited investor requirements largely determine eligibility to participate in private securities offerings. The current requirements are primarily based on financial status. For most individual investors to qualify as accredited investors, they need an annual income of $200,000 (or $300,000 combined with their spouse) or a net worth (including their spouse’s net worth but excluding the value of their primary residence) of $1 million.

These quantitative requirements have been subject to criticism. They have been in effect since 1982, with the only change being the exclusion (in early 2012) of the value of the investor’s primary residence in the net worth test. Some commentators say that these requirements are too restrictive and exclude too many investors from participation in private offerings, thus stifling the capital available to smaller companies. That criticism may have become less valid over time; when the $200,000 annual income test was first implemented in 1982, less than 1%  of potential investors qualified. Due to inflation and the lack of an increase in the income requirement, approximately 9% of potential investors currently qualify. . Conversely, however, this standard has been criticized by other commentators on the basis that it allows more investors to participate in risky and dangerous private investments because the qualification standards have not changed over time. This has led to some calls for indexing the income standard to inflation. The SEC did review these quantitative standards but declined to make any changes at this time.
Continue Reading SEC changes “accredited investor” definition – good, but not enough

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From where I sit, the SEC under the chairmanship of Jay Clayton has generally done a good job for public companies.  It has adopted a number of rules and amendments that make disclosure more effective without appreciably adding to – and in some cases reducing – the burdens on public companies.  Examples include streamlining financial disclosure requirements, rationalizing the definitions of “smaller reporting company”, “accelerated filer”, and “large accelerated filer”, and revising the rules governing financial statements of acquired and disposed businesses (although the latter do not take effect until 2021). And let’s not forget the very recent rule changes affecting proxy advisory firms, including a critical requirement that those firms provide companies with their voting recommendations.

While I wish that the SEC had also focused on proxy plumbing, it’s still a pretty good record, and it’s only a partial listing.

However (you knew there would be a “however”), I’m profoundly disappointed in the SEC’s proposal to “fix” Form 13F – the form on which large investment managers report their equity holdings of public companies.  While it’s nice that the SEC has turned its attention to a form that has long been in need of updating, the proposal seems to me to be unacceptable in at least two major respects.
Continue Reading 13F proposal — the SEC can (and should) do better

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As noted in a prior post, every now and then the SEC Enforcement Division likes to remind companies of the requirement to disclose personal benefits, or perquisites.  I’d even hazard a guess – completely unsubstantiated by research – that enforcement actions regarding perquisite non-disclosure make up a significant percentage of enforcement actions concerning proxy statements.

And yet, companies seem to keep forgetting about perks disclosure.  In some cases, the companies’ disclosure controls may not capture perquisites, but my hunch – again, unsupported by research, but this time supported by experience – is that companies and, in particular, their executives, manage to persuade themselves that the benefits in question have a legitimate business purpose and thus are not personal benefits at all.  Over the course of my career, I’ve heard hundreds if not thousands of reasons why a seemingly personal benefit should be treated as a business expense.  Here are just a few:
Continue Reading When it comes to perquisites, caveat discloser

The SEC is re-examining one of the most important disclosures companies provide – Management’s Discussion and Analysis, or MD&A.  I’ve read lots of MD&As in my time, and to be completely candid, many of them – or at least too many of them – are poor.

There are lots of ways in which MD&As are poor, but my principal complaints are as follows:

  1. They don’t provide the “A” in MD&A – the analysis. Sales are up?  Great!  Why were they up?  Well, that’s anyone’s guess.  “Increased market acceptance of our product.”  Also great, but does “greater acceptance” mean that more units sold?  That customers were willing to pay more for each unit, so the company raised the price?  That the company expanded the markets in which the product is sold?  Beats me.
  2. Instead of discussing the “why’s,” companies do a cut and paste of key line items in their financial statements, sometimes with a “Percentage Change” column, indicating how much each line in, say, the P&L changed from period to period. In other words, they’re doing what any reader can do, which is precisely what prior SEC glosses on MD&A disclosure have said not to do.  And then they copy and paste sections of the notes to financial statements about how revenue is determined.  Again, no “why.”

I could rattle off a list of other weaknesses of many MD&As, but let’s move on.Continue Reading Analyze This!

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Although Dodd-Frank was enacted in 2010, the rule needed to implement one of its provisions – the requirement to disclose hedging policies – only recently took effect.  In fact, for calendar-year companies, 2020 will be the first year in which the proxy statement will have…

In recent years, the SEC has made a number of incremental changes to make disclosures more effective – not only more meaningful and user-friendly for investors, but also helpful to those of us who prepare disclosures for our companies and clients.

The drive to make disclosures more effective seems to have kicked into a higher gear with the August 8 issuance of a proposal that may result in the most significant changes in the disclosure rules in more than 30 years.  The proposal would modify some key provisions of Regulation S-K, and in doing so would move considerably closer to a principles-based approach to disclosure.   Some details follow.
Continue Reading Disclosure effectiveness goes into high gear

I recently came across an article reporting that the interim president of a state university system had failed to report a number of corporate board seats on his ethics forms.  That got me thinking about the forms he may have been asked to complete, which in turn got me thinking about D&O questionnaires.

Getting directors and officers to accurately complete and return questionnaires in a timely manner is one of the most frustrating tasks faced by corporate secretaries.  Years ago, I was speaking at a program for aspiring corporate governance nerds, when a young aspirant asked me if I had the secret to getting this task done.  If memory serves me correctly, my response was to the effect that if I had the answer to her question, I could retire.

However, I sometimes think that people who circulate questionnaires are their own worst enemies.  For example, a recent study reported that D&O questionnaires averaged 40 pages and 65 questions.  That means that some, perhaps many, questionnaires are far longer.  It’s unrealistic to expect someone with a life – much less a day job – to devote the amount of time necessary to complete a 40-page (or longer) questionnaire, particularly when many questions don’t lend themselves to simple “yes” or “no” answers.
Continue Reading The lowly D&O questionnaire