Tag: definition of smaller reporting company
On its second birthday, proposal to change the definition of “smaller reporting company” is adopted
The pressure has been coming from all directions—the Congress, the Treasury—indeed, there’s been nary an advisory committee that hasn’t weighed in on this topic: time for the SEC to change the definition of “smaller reporting company.” After all, today is the second birthday for this proposal—has it aged like a fine wine or is it moldy and stinky like an old piece of cheese? The verdict: moldy cheese that made no one happy, but they all ate it anyway.
This morning, the SEC unanimously voted to amend the definition of “smaller reporting company” to allow more companies to take advantage of the scaled disclosures permitted for companies that meet the definition. (Here is the press release.) The amendments raise the SRC cap from “less than $75 million” in public float to “less than $250 million” and include as SRCs companies with less than $100 million in annual revenues if they also have either no public float or, in a change from the proposal, a public float that is less than $700 million. The change was intended to promote capital formation and to reduce compliance costs for small public companies. (The SEC also voted to mandate Inline XBRL and to propose a number of changes to the whistleblower program, but those will be covered in subsequent posts.)
What’s on the Agenda—the SEC’s Regulatory Flexibility Agenda, that is?
SEC Chair Jay Clayton has repeatedly made a point of his intent to take the Regulatory Flexibility Act Agenda ”seriously,” streamlining it to show what the SEC actually expected to take up in the subsequent period. (See this PubCo post and this PubCo post.) The agenda has just been released, and it certainly appears that Clayton has been true to his word: several items that had taken up long-term residency on numerous prior agendas seem to be absent from this one.
What’s happening with those SEC proposals for Dodd-Frank clawbacks and disclosure of pay for performance and hedging? Apparently, not much.
As noted in this article from Law360, the SEC’s latest Regulatory Flexibility Agenda, which identifies those regs that the SEC intends to propose or adopt in the coming year— and those deferred for a later time—has now been posted. The Agenda shifts to the category of long-term actions most of the Dodd-Frank compensation-related items that had previously been on the short-term agenda—not really a big surprise given the deregulatory bent of the new administration. Keep in mind, however, that the Agenda has no binding effect and, in this case, could be even less prophetic than usual; the Preamble to the SEC’s Agenda indicates that it reflects “only the priorities of the Acting Chairman [Michael Piwowar], and [does] not necessarily reflect the view and priorities of any individual Commissioner.” It also indicates that information in the Agenda was accurate as of March 29, 2017. As a result, it does not necessarily reflect the views of the new SEC Chair, Jay Clayton, who was not confirmed in that post until May.
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