Tag: SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda
Commissioner Uyeda’s prescription for addressing decline in number of public companies
The public/private company dichotomy has been a perennial discussion topic. (See, e.g., this PubCo post, this PubCo post, this PubCo post, this PubCo post and this PubCo post.) A statistic frequently tossed around is that there are about half as many public companies today as there were in 1996, and those that are around today are older and larger. And while the IPO market was in a bit of funk last year, the private markets have been viewed as consistently vibrant, with more capital raised in the private markets than in the public. But the question of why and how to address the decline in the number of public companies has been a point of contention: is excessive regulation of public companies a deterrent to going public or has deregulation of the private markets juiced their appeal, but sacrificed investor protection in the bargain? At the end of January, we heard from SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw addressing the question of whether the securities laws governing private capital raises might be too lax. Now, SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda is speaking his mind on the topic, presenting remarks at the at the “Going Public in the 2020s” conference at Columbia Law School.
Extra hours to file Form 144—should the deadline be extended for all filings, Uyeda asks?
A couple of days ago, the SEC amended Reg S-T to extend the filing deadline for Form 144 from 5:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. Eastern Time. You may remember that, in June last year, the SEC adopted amendments to require electronic submission of several forms that could then be submitted on paper, including, for reporting companies, Form 144 (beginning April 13, 2023). (See this PubCo post.) Form 144 was then transformed into an online fillable document, similar to Form 4, designed to facilitate electronic filing and to be machine-readable and available for automated and efficient analysis. Prior to this week’s amendment to Reg S-T, a Form 144 submitted by direct transmission after 5:30 p.m. was deemed filed the next business day. Under the new amendments, effective March 20, a “Form 144 that otherwise complies with applicable filing requirements that is submitted by direct transmission after 5:30 p.m., but no later than 10:00 p.m., will be deemed filed the same business day.”
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