Category: Corporate Governance
Is this insider trading?
On Tuesday, the SEC announced that it had filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court charging a former employee of Medivation Inc., an oncology-focused biopharma, with insider trading in advance of Medivation’s announcement that it would be acquired by a big pharma company. But it’s not what you might think. The employee didn’t trade in shares of Medivation or shares of the acquiror, nor did he tip anyone about the transaction. No, according to the SEC, he used the information about his employer’s acquisition to purchase call options on a separate biopharma company, Incyte Corporation, which the SEC claims was comparable to Medivation. According to the SEC, the employee made that purchase based on an assumption that the acquisition of Medivation at a healthy premium would probably boost the share price of Incyte. Incyte’s stock price increased after the sale of Medivation was announced. The SEC charged that the employee breached his “duty to refrain from using Medivation’s proprietary information for his own personal gain” and traded ahead of the announcement, in violation of Rule 10b-5. Will the SEC succeed or is the factual basis of the charge just too attenuated?
SEC charges another company for misleading cybersecurity disclosure
It’s déjà vu all over again! On Monday, the SEC announced settled charges against Pearson plc, an NYSE-listed, educational publishing and services company based in London, for failure to disclose a cybersecurity breach. You might recall that just a few months ago, the SEC announced settled charges against another company for failure to timely disclose a cybersecurity vulnerability that led to a leak of data, with disclosure ultimately spurred by imminent media reports. Is there a trend here? In this instance, it wasn’t just a vulnerability—there was an actual known breach and exfiltration of private data. Nevertheless, Pearson decided not to disclose it and framed its cybersecurity risk factor disclosure as purely hypothetical. The SEC viewed that disclosure as misleading and imposed a civil penalty on Pearson of $1 million. The case serves as yet another reminder of the dangers of risk disclosures presented as hypothetical when those risks have actually come to fruition—a presentation that has now repeatedly drawn scrutiny in the context of cybersecurity disclosure.
How do companies approach climate disclosure?
So, what are the GHG emissions for a mega roll of Charmin Ultra Soft toilet paper? If you guessed 771 grams, you’d be right…or, at least, according to this article in the WSJ, you’d be consistent with the calculations of its carbon footprint made by the Natural Resources Defense Council. By comparison, a liter of Coke emits 346 grams from farm to supermarket, as calculated by the company. That’s the kind of calculation that many public companies may all need to be doing in a few years, depending on the requirements of the SEC’s expected rulemaking on climate. Of course, many companies are already doing those calculations and including them in their sustainability reports. But they generally have discretion in deciding what to include. A mandate from the SEC could be something else entirely. The WSJ calls it “the biggest potential expansion in corporate disclosure since the creation of the Depression-era rules over financial disclosures that underpin modern corporate statements. Already it has kicked off a confusing melee as companies, regulators and environmentalists argue over the proper way to account for carbon.”
A little more on the Nasdaq Board Diversity Rule
On Friday, the SEC approved Nasdaq’s proposal for new listing rules regarding board diversity and disclosure, along with a proposal to provide free access to a board recruiting service. The new listing rules adopt a “comply or explain” mandate for board diversity for most listed companies and require companies listed on Nasdaq’s U.S. exchange to publicly disclose “consistent, transparent diversity statistics” regarding the composition of their boards in a matrix format. (See this PubCo post.) Nasdaq has now posted a three-page summary of its new board diversity rule, What Nasdaq-listed Companies Should Know.
SEC approves Nasdaq “comply-or-explain” proposal for board diversity
You probably remember that, late last year, Nasdaq filed with the SEC a proposal for new listing rules regarding board diversity and disclosure, accompanied by a proposal to provide free access to a board recruiting service. The new listing rules would adopt a “comply or explain” mandate for board diversity for most listed companies and require companies listed on Nasdaq’s U.S. exchange to publicly disclose “consistent, transparent diversity statistics” regarding the composition of their boards. In March, after Nasdaq amended its proposal, and in June, the Division of Trading and Markets, pursuant to delegated authority, took actions that had the effect of postponing a decision on the proposal—until now. On Friday afternoon, the SEC approved the two proposals.
House budget package would scrap proxy advisor rules
It’s worth noting that the minibus budget package passed by the House last week includes a provision intended to put the kibosh on the proxy advisory firm rules that were adopted by the SEC in July 2020. Specifically, the bill provides that “[n]one of the funds made available by this Act may be used to implement the amendments to sections 240.14a-1(l), 240.14a–2, or 240.14a-9 of title 17, Code of Federal Regulations, that were adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 22, 2020.” Of course, Corp Fin had already put a temporary halt on enforcement of those rules. And unlike prior years, there is no provision in the House bill—yet—that would prohibit the SEC from using any of the funds to finalize rules requiring disclosure of corporate political spending. The bill next goes to the Senate, where, of course, there could be substantial changes.
Alliance Advisors wraps up the 2021 proxy season
Alliance Advisors has just released its 2021 proxy season review, a season they characterize as “dynamic,” as investors stepped forward to express their views on a variety of environmental and social topics. At least 34 E&S shareholder proposals won majority support, compared to 21 proposals last year. And over a dozen shareholder proposals on diversity, climate change and political spending won with votes in excess of 80%. There were also some new entries among the shareholder proposals—such as requests for racial audits, access to COVID-19 medicines and say on climate—that received support averaging around 30%, a level that Alliance characterizes as “remarkably” good for first timers. Alliance acknowledges that these results did not come entirely out of the blue, as large asset managers such as BlackRock and Vanguard had previously signaled that they might take steps this season to more closely align their proxy voting records with their advocacy positions.
Gensler discusses potential elements of climate risk disclosure rule proposal
In remarks yesterday on a webinar, “Climate and Global Financial Markets,” from Principles for Responsible Investment, SEC Chair Gary Gensler offered us some clues about what to expect from the SEC’s anticipated climate disclosure requirements by analogizing to the Olympics: there are rules to measure performance and the “scoring system is both quantitative and qualitative,” which “brings comparability to evaluating” performance among athletes and over time. In addition, as with the components of public company reporting generally, the types of sports included in the Olympics change over time—there was no Olympic women’s surfing competition 100 years ago, but interests and demand have changed. So with disclosure requirements, which have gradually expanded to include disclosure about management, MD&A, compensation and risk factors, some hotly debated topics in their time. Now, investors are demanding disclosure about climate risk, and it’s time for the SEC to “take the baton.” To that end, Gensler has asked the SEC staff to “develop a mandatory climate risk disclosure rule proposal for the Commission’s consideration by the end of the year.” In his remarks, he outlines some of the concepts that are being considered for inclusion in that proposal.
BlackRock flexes its muscles during the 2020-21 proxy period
Although BlackRock, which manages assets valued at over $9 trillion, and its CEO, Laurence Fink, have long played an outsized role in promoting corporate sustainability and social responsibility, BlackRock has also long been a target for protests by activists. As reported by Bloomberg, “[e]nvironmental advocates in cities including New York, Miami, San Francisco, London and Zurich targeted BlackRock for a wave of protests in mid-April, holding up images of giant eyeballs to signal that ‘all eyes’ were on BlackRock’s voting decisions.” Of course, protests by climate activists outside of the company’s offices are nothing new. There’s even a global network of NGOs, social movements, grassroots groups and financial advocates called “BlackRock’s Big Problem,” which pressures BlackRock to “rapidly align [its] business practices with a climate-safe world.” Why this singular outrage at BlackRock? Perhaps because, as reflected in press reports like this one in the NYT, activists have reacted to the appearance of stark inconsistencies between the company’s advocacy positions and its proxy voting record: BlackRock has historically conducted extensive engagement with companies but, in the end, voted with management much more often than activists preferred. For example, in the first quarter of 2020, the company supported less than 10% of environmental and social shareholder proposals and opposed three environmental proposals. BlackRock has just released its Investment Stewardship Report for the 2020-2021 proxy voting year (July 1, 2020 to June 30, 2021). What a difference a year makes.
Commissioner Peirce offers Brookings her views on ESG
On Tuesday, the Brookings Institution held a panel discussion regarding the role that the SEC should play in ESG investing. In describing the event, Brookings said that ESG issues “continue to climb in importance for many investors and policy makers. What role should public policy and financial regulation play in response to ESG concerns? These questions are of particular importance for the [SEC] tasked with protecting America’s capital markets and American investors.” You might have assumed that Brookings would have invited as the speaker one of the SEC’s fervent advocates for more prescriptive ESG disclosure regulation, such as Commissioner Allison Herren Lee. But instead, Brookings invited the contrarian Commissioner Hester Peirce as the SEC representative. As an opponent of the SEC’s venturing into the mandatory ESG metrics disclosure business, Peirce came prepared to engage, armed with a voluminous speech consisting of 10 theses, footnoted to the hilt. Recognizing that “whether and how we will move toward a more prescriptive ESG disclosure framework” is now front and center on the SEC’s current agenda, Peirce offered ten theses “without much sugar-coating” in the hopes of catalyzing “a textured conversation about the complexities and consequences of a potential ESG rulemaking.”
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