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6650058825_a23c5c0d35_qIn the midst of the chaos of the presidential election, vicious attacks from Senator Warren, and goodness knows what else, the SEC continues to crank out requests for comment, rules and interpretations.

It’s the latter category that has attracted our attention lately, as the Staff has focused on some technical matters that securities counsel have been pondering for a while.

401(k) plans with a self-directed “brokerage window”

First, in September, the SEC published updated Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations, including one on 401(k) plans that feature a so-called “brokerage window”.  It’s been generally assumed that if a plan does not include an employer stock fund in which employee funds can be invested, Securities Act registration is not required.  This CDI says “maybe not” – if the plan (a) permits employer and employee contributions to be invested through a self-directed “brokerage window”, and (b) the plan does not prohibit investments in employer stock through the window, registration may be required.Continue Reading The SEC Keeps On Keeping On

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

Photo by Ryan Smith
Photo by Ryan Smith

On July 14, the SEC Staff published a new Compliance and Disclosure Interpretation clarifying when an investor who may not be entirely passive may nonetheless remain eligible to file a beneficial ownership report on Schedule 13G rather than Schedule 13D.  Anyone who has tried to dance on the head of that pin will be relieved, particularly given the far greater disclosure burdens associated with the latter filing.

All other things being equal, the rules specify that a shareholder may file on the less burdensome Schedule 13G only if it acquired or is holding the subject equity securities with neither the purpose nor effect of changing or influencing control of the issuer.  However, the rules are not clear as to whether some actions (or an intent to engage in those actions) may make the 13G unavailable.Continue Reading To 13G or not to 13G

Photo by brennahRO
Photo by brennahRO

In recent years, the SEC – frequently due to Congressional mandates – has reduced the amount of disclosure that smaller public companies must provide.  Most recently, on June 27, the SEC proposed yet another rule that would reduce disclosure burdens by enabling more companies to qualify as “smaller reporting companies,” or “SRCs.”

The proposal would expand the definition of SRCs to cover registrants with less than $250 million in public float and registrants with zero public float if their revenues were below $100 million in the previous year.

If your company is not currently an SRC and you are wondering what relief you might get if you were, the proposing release lays it out in an easy-to-read table:
Continue Reading Smaller gets bigger

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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

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

Two news items from the front lines:

First, you may recall my mentioning that the Council of Institutional Investors was considering adopting a new policy that would limit newly public companies’ ability to include “shareholder-unfriendly” provisions in their organizational documents (see “Caveat Issuer“, posted on February 13).  I just came back from Washington,…

According to SEC Chair White, regulators are looking – and not happily – at companies’ increasing use of customized financial disclosures.  In fact, her recent remarks suggest that additional regulation is not being ruled out to curb the use of such “bespoke” data.

For some of us it may seem like only yesterday – though it was actually in 2003 – that the SEC adopted Regulation G to address the then-growing concern that companies were developing odd ways of communicating financial information to make their numbers look better.   In general, Reg G says that companies

  1. cannot make non-GAAP disclosures more prominent than GAAP disclosures;
  2. need to explain why they use non-GAAP disclosures; and
  3. must provide a reconciliation showing how each non-GAAP measure derives from the GAAP financial statements.

So far, so good.  However, some companies give little more than lip service to these requirements.  For example, it’s not unusual to see Item 2 addressed by a statement along the lines of “investors who follow the company use this measure to assess its performance.”  And, more recently, companies seem to be developing more peculiar ways of showing performance, such as excluding the effects of some taxes but not others.  This creativity may not be as arch as excluding recurring items or turning losses into gains, but it still makes regulators uneasy.Continue Reading Bespoke financial data?