Tag: scaled disclosure

Acting SEC Chair advocates “cost-effective regulations for every stage of a company’s lifecycle”

Yesterday, Acting SEC Chair Mark Uyeda delivered remarks to the Florida Bar’s 41st Annual Federal Securities Institute and M&A Conference focused on regulatory efforts affecting every stage of a company’s lifecycle. Setting the stage, Uyeda characterized his “first priority” as an effort to “return normalcy” to the SEC after the “stark aberration” of the immediately preceding Administration “from longstanding norms as to what the Commission has historically viewed its legal authority, policy priorities, and use of enforcement.” That means returning the SEC “to its narrow mission to facilitate capital formation, while protecting investors and maintaining fair, orderly, and efficient markets,” and creating “capital markets that facilitate the competitiveness and ingenuity of American industry.” And that effort begins with “enabl[ing] private companies to obtain more capital through cost-effective means,” “enabl[ing] more retail investors to place their capital into private companies,” regulatory actions to “help make IPOs attractive again,” and finally, revisiting the rules governing the disclosure obligations of public companies to reduce complexity and ensure that “smaller companies are not disproportionately burdened as they compete.” Given that Uyeda was previously counsel at the SEC to former Commissioner, now Chair nominee, Paul Atkins, I would guess that there’s a pretty good chance that his views on these topics are largely in sync with those of Atkins and, presumably, we can expect proposals on these topics in the new Administration. 

SEC Committee on Small and Emerging Companies completes final report and recommendations

At the final meeting yesterday of the SEC Committee on Small and Emerging Companies (apparently soon to morph into the Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee), the Committee finalized the discussion draft of its Final Report to the SEC and heard  presentations on SOX 404(b), the most recent bête noire of deregulation advocates. (The Committee also heard a presentation on Rule 701, which will be addressed in a subsequent post.)

SEC proposes to allow more companies to qualify as smaller reporting companies

by Cydney Posner Without holding an open meeting, the SEC has proposed changes to the definition of a “smaller reporting company” that would raise the financial cap from “less than $75 million” in public float to “less than $250 million,” allowing more companies to take advantage of the scaled disclosures […]

Corp Fin Director provides some insights into the direction of the SEC “Disclosure Effectiveness Initiative”

by Cydney Posner A few days ago, Corp Fin director, Keith Higgins, gave a speech, “Shaping Company Disclosure for the 21st Century” before the George A. Leet Business Law Symposium at Case Western Reserve University School of Law, in which he discussed some of the SEC’s considerations in its “Disclosure […]