Just as the U.S. seeks to roll back regulations, the European Parliament adopts new corporate governance rules

by Cydney Posner Just when the U.S. is looking at how to roll back its regulations on corporations (among others) (see, e.g., this PubCo post, this PubCo post and this PubCo post), the rest of the world seems to be headed in the opposite direction.  On Tuesday, the EU Parliament approved a […]

BlackRock sets its priorities for board engagement

by Cydney Posner Asset management firm BlackRock (reportedly the largest, with $5.1 trillion under management) has identified its “Investment Stewardship” priorities for 2017-2018, intended to help companies prepare for engaging with BlackRock. Among the hot topics are governance (including board composition and diversity), corporate strategy for long-term value creation in […]

Say farewell to the conflict minerals case, Nat’l Ass’n of Mfrs. v. SEC

by Cydney Posner The parties to the conflict minerals case have filed in the D.C. District Court a “Joint Status Report,” which requests that the Court enter a final judgment in accordance with the decision of the Court of Appeals.  As a result, it will be case closed for National […]

SEC committee discusses multi-class common with unequal voting rights

by Cydney Posner An interesting topic of discussion at a meeting last week of the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee was “unequal voting rights of common stock” — the trend over the last decade (plus) for a small number of IPO companies, particularly tech companies, to offer low-vote or, more recently, no-vote […]

State Street Global Advisors talks the talk on board gender diversity, but will it walk the walk?

by Cydney Posner Happy International Women’s Day! In this press release, State Street Global Advisors, which manages $2.47 trillion in assets, announced, on the eve of International Women’s Day, that it is “calling on the more than 3,500 companies [in which] State Street invests on behalf of clients, representing more […]

SEC continues to grant no-action relief in connection with proxy access fix-it proposals

by Cydney Posner The SEC has posted a number of additional Corp Fin responses to requests for no-action, as well as to requests for reconsideration of previous denials of relief, regarding shareholder proposals to amend proxy access bylaws, so-called “fix-it” proposals. In all cases, the companies argued that they should […]

Exhibits just one click away! (updated)

by Cydney Posner At an open meeting this morning, the SEC voted to adopt new rule and form amendments requiring that the exhibit index in registration statements and reports contain hyperlinks to the exhibits listed and that these filings all be made in HTML format. (The SEC also voted to […]

SEC votes to propose Inline XBRL (updated)

by Cydney Posner At an open meeting this morning, the SEC voted to propose the mandatory use of Inline XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) for financial statement information. The proposal is intended to facilitate “improvements in the quality and usefulness of XBRL data and, over time, decreas[e] filing costs by […]

Exhibits just one click away!

by Cydney Posner At an open meeting this morning, the SEC voted to adopt new rule and form amendments requiring that the exhibit index in registration statements and reports contain hyperlinks to the exhibits listed and that these filings all be made in HTML format. (The SEC also voted to […]

Another theory on Corp Fin’s position on proxy access fix-it proposals

by Cydney Posner Corp Fin has refined its position with regard to exclusion of proposals to amend existing proxy access bylaws.  However, the basis for the staff’s determination to grant or refuse no-action relief in that context remains a conundrum.