New challenge to Nasdaq board diversity rule
A new petition has been filed challenging the Nasdaq board diversity rule (see this PubCo post). The National Center for Public Policy Research filed the petition on Tuesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, but asked the court to transfer the proceeding to the Fifth Circuit, where an earlier petition filed by the Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment is pending. (See this PubCo post.) The new Nasdaq listing rules, which were approved by the SEC on August 6, 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.
ISS releases results of 2021 broad policy and climate surveys
ISS has just released the results of its 2021 global benchmark policy survey, which, this year, actually comprises two surveys—one related to a broad array of policies and the other specifically addressing climate change. Along with issues related to executive pay and governance, the broad survey also addressed issues such as non-financial ESG performance metrics in executive compensation, racial equity audits and virtual-only shareholder meetings. The climate survey solicited views on topics such as board oversight of climate risks, say-on-climate proposals and other issues relevant to ISS’ climate voting policy.
Do companies time changes in accounting estimates to meet analyst forecasts?
In this new paper by a group of academics from the University of Richmond (and elsewhere), the authors explore whether companies might be timing when they record changes in their accounting estimates (CAEs) to meet earnings benchmarks. Because accounting estimates are “by their nature forward-looking, often subjective and difficult to quantify with precision,” they would seem to offer an excellent “opportunity for management to misrepresent the firm’s financial performance.” CAEs, the authors suggest, may be used to meet or beat earnings benchmarks or, alternatively, to smooth earnings or take a “big bath” when the current period’s earnings are particularly low. For purposes of the study, the authors assumed that “most CAEs are fully justified and reasonable, and the ‘manipulation’ stems primarily from their timing, not the nature or appropriateness of the CAEs themselves.” The study concludes, particularly with respect to analyst forecast earnings, that companies do indeed “appear to time CAEs to meet earnings benchmarks or achieve other reporting objectives.” It’s worth noting that the SEC has recently brought charges in a couple of cases involving earnings or expense management (see this PubCo post and this PubCo post), so violations resulting from earnings management practices appear to be a focus for Enforcement.
First legal challenge to California’s board gender diversity statute heads to trial
You might remember that the first legal challenge to California’s board gender diversity statute, Crest v. Alex Padilla, was a complaint filed in 2019 in California state court by three California taxpayers seeking to prevent implementation and enforcement of the law. Framed as a “taxpayer suit,” the litigation sought to enjoin Alex Padilla, the then-California Secretary of State (now U.S. Senator), from expending taxpayer funds and taxpayer-financed resources to enforce or implement the law, SB 826, alleging that the law’s mandate is an unconstitutional gender-based quota and violates the California constitution. The court in that case has just denied each side’s motion for summary judgment after concluding that there were triable issues of material fact. The case will now be going to trial, which was initially set for October 25. However, on the court’s own motion, the trial was “trailed” to December 1. Stay tuned.
NYSE proposes to amend calculation of “votes cast” [updated]
Currently, where a matter requires shareholder approval under NYSE rules, the minimum vote required is a majority of the votes cast on the matter. But how do you count votes cast? Do you count abstentions? What about broker non-votes? The NYSE has historically advised that broker non-votes do not count as votes cast, but abstentions do. That means that, under the NYSE rules, approval requires that the votes in favor exceed the aggregate of the votes cast against the proposal plus abstentions. Unfortunately, that’s not how “votes cast” is typically defined for Delaware corporations. If Delaware corporations elect in their charter or bylaws to use a “votes cast” standard, abstentions are generally not counted as “votes cast”—because an abstention reflects a decision not to vote on the matter and the holder has not cast those votes—with the result that, for a proposal to be approved, the votes in favor of the proposal must exceed the votes cast against. Confused? You’re not alone. The NYSE has “observed that this approach has caused confusion among listed companies.” That’s why the NYSE has just filed with the SEC a proposal to amend that provision of the NYSE Listed Company Manual. [Update: This proposal has been approved.]
The Conference Board shares insights on how to convey your “sustainability story”
How do companies tackle the assignment of conveying to their shareholders and other stakeholders how they approach sustainability—in a way that is accurate, clear and genuine and that does not sound like a confected facsimile of every other peer company? That sounds like a challenging task. To address that challenge, The Conference Board convened a working group of over 300 executives from more than 150 companies who met five times between July 2020 and May 2021 to share ideas about how companies can effectively “tell their sustainability stories.” The Board captured some of those ideas in this report.
Climate risk disclosure “glaringly absent” in financial statements? Will regulators act to require more?
In one of the illustrative comments in Corp Fin’s just published sample comment letter on climate issues, Corp Fin asks companies to explain what consideration they may have given to providing in their SEC filings the same type of expansive climate-related disclosure that’s in their corporate social responsibility reports. One place in companies’ SEC filings where climate-related disclosure is “glaringly absent,” according to this report from the Carbon Tracker Initiative, is in the financial statements. Although many companies face serious climate risk, and many have even made net-zero pledges, the report “found little evidence that companies or their auditors considered climate-related matters in the 2020 financial statements.” According to the lead author of the report, “[b]ased on the significant exposure these companies have to transition risks, and with many announcing emissions targets, we expected substantially more consideration of climate matters in the financials than we found. Without this information there is little way of knowing the extent of capital at risk, or if funds are being allocated to unsustainable businesses….” Financial statement disclosure was so deficient, the report concluded, investors were essentially “flying blind.”
9th Circuit decides Section 11 standing in a direct listing
When the SEC was considering the NYSE’s proposal to permit direct listings of primary offerings, one of the frequently raised problems related to the potential “vulnerability” of “shareholder legal rights under Section 11 of the Securities Act.” Section 11 provides standing to sue for misstatements in a registration statement to any person acquiring “such security,” typically interpreted to mean a security registered under the specific registration statement. The “vulnerability” was thought to arise as a result of the difficulty plaintiffs may have—in a direct listing where both registered and unregistered shares may be sold at the same time—in “tracing” the shares purchased back to the registration statement in question. In approving adoption of the NYSE rule, the SEC said that it did not “expect any such tracing challenges in this context to be of such magnitude as to render the proposal inconsistent with the Act. We expect judicial precedent on traceability in the direct listing context to continue to evolve,” pointing to Pirani v. Slack Technologies. As the NYSE had observed, only the district court in Slack had addressed the issue, and had concluded that, at the pleading stage, plaintiffs could still pursue their claims even if they could not definitively trace the securities they acquired to the registration statement. However, the NYSE noted, the case was on appeal. (See this PubCo post.) That appeal, Pirani v. Slack Technologies, has just been decided by a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit. The Court affirmed, with one dissent, the district court’s order, ruling that the plaintiff had standing to sue under Section 11.
Corp Fin posts sample climate comment letter
This afternoon, Corp Fin posted a sample letter to companies containing illustrative comments regarding climate change disclosures. Presumably, the goal is to help companies think about and craft their climate-related disclosure.
How do companies address governance issues for corporate political activity?
In the last couple of years, many CEOs have felt the need to voice their views on political, environmental and social issues, such as racial justice and voting restrictions. For example, after the murder of George Floyd and resulting national protests, many of the country’s largest corporations expressed solidarity and pledged support for racial justice. After January 6, a number of companies announced that their corporate PACs had suspended—temporarily or permanently—their contributions to one or both political parties or to lawmakers who objected to certification of the presidential election. However, as The Conference Board has recently stated, in the current “era of intense political polarization in the United States, and with the immediacy, ubiquity, and (often) inaccuracy of social media, companies are subject to ever-greater scrutiny for their political activities.” In this article, Deloitte and the Society for Corporate Governance report on a survey they conducted in July 2021 about companies’ approaches to publicly addressing controversial social and political issues. As the authors note, “taking a stance publicly on controversial or sensitive topics poses both risks and opportunities, including alienating or appealing to key stakeholders; enhancing or damaging the corporate culture; and eroding or building trust and brand reputation,” leading some companies to consider more systematically how they approach public engagement on these types of issues.
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