Author: Cam C. Hoang

Cam helps clients with corporate matters including governance and SEC compliance, equity plans and executive compensation, securities offerings, and mergers and acquisitions. Prior to her return to Dorsey, Cam was Senior Counsel and Assistant Secretary at General Mills, Inc., where she helped the company achieve its corporate governance and SEC compliance objectives, worked on securities offerings and M&A transactions, risk management, foundation governance, and general corporate and commercial matters. Before joining General Mills in 2005, Cam was an associate for five years in the Dorsey Corporate Group in Minneapolis.

SEC Clarifies Effective Date for Disclosure Simplification Rules

SEC Clarifies Effective Date for Disclosure Simplification Rules

In August, the SEC adopted amendments updating and simplifying disclosure rules. See our prior summary here. Notable amendments included: the extension of a previously annual requirement to interim periods, to present a statement of changes in shareholders’ equity and to disclose the amount of dividends per share for each class of shares (vs common shares only) (either in a separate statement or a footnote)(revised Rules...

SEC Withdraws No Action Letters on Proxy Advisory Firms

SEC Withdraws No Action Letters on Proxy Advisory Firms

In order to facilitate discussion on the role of proxy advisory firms at the upcoming Roundtable on the Proxy Process, which is scheduled for November 2018, the SEC staff has determined to withdraw two no action letters that provided comfort to investment advisers in relying on proxy advisory firm recommendations: In Egan-Jones Proxy Services (May 27, 2004), the staff had confirmed that by voting based on the...

New SEC Rules Eliminates Duplicative, Overlapping, Outdated Disclosure Requirements

New SEC Rules Eliminates Duplicative, Overlapping, Outdated Disclosure Requirements

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced last Friday that it has adopted amendments to certain disclosure requirements that have become duplicative, overlapping, or outdated in light of other Commission disclosure requirements, US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), or changes in the information environment.   These amendments were originally proposed in 2016, in order to implement provisions of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act.  ...

SEC Issues $1.75 Million Penalty Over Perks Disclosures

SEC Issues $1.75 Million Penalty Over Perks Disclosures

A recent SEC consent order against The Dow Chemical Company reminds companies that when evaluating whether or not to disclose a payment or benefit to an executive as a perk in a proxy statement, the fact that the item has a tangential business purpose, or is convenient for the company, is insufficient grounds to exclude the item as a perk.  In order to be excluded as...

SEC Approves Series of Final and Proposed Rules in Line with Stated Priorities

SEC Approves Series of Final and Proposed Rules in Line with Stated Priorities

The SEC held a very busy open meeting yesterday, voting on the following final and proposed rules: Adoption of amendments to modernize the definition of “smaller reporting company,” which was established in 2008.  See our previous discussion of the amendments.   Adoption of amendments to require the use of the Inline XBRL format in certain filings, which were proposed in 2017 and have been under...

SEC Expands on “Smaller Reporting Companies” Eligible for Scaled Disclosure

SEC Expands on “Smaller Reporting Companies” Eligible for Scaled Disclosure

The SEC announced that it has voted to amend the definition of “smaller reporting company,” or “SRC,” expanding the population of companies that qualify for a range of scaled (reduced) disclosure requirements. The rules will become effective 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. Examples of scaled disclosure include that SRCs, in their annual reports on Form 10-K, are not obligated to include risk...

Failure to Disclose Leads to $35 Million Penalty in the Yahoo! Cybersecurity Breach

Failure to Disclose Leads to $35 Million Penalty in the Yahoo! Cybersecurity Breach

The Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) announced Tuesday that Altaba, the entity formerly known as Yahoo! Inc., has agreed to pay a $35 million penalty to settle charges that it misled investors by failing to disclose one of the world’s largest data breaches in which hackers stole personal data relating to hundreds of millions of user accounts. According to the SEC’s order, within days...

Disclosure Implications of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

Disclosure Implications of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

As companies prepare their Form 10-K and proxy statement disclosures, they will be challenged with disclosing the impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act on performance results for the purposes of financial reporting as well as for compensation measurement. Here is a short list of issues to be aware of. Form 10-K Disclosure Implications of Tax Reform: Sections in the MD&A likely to be...

CEO Pay Ratio Rule Will Not Be Delayed

CEO Pay Ratio Rule Will Not Be Delayed

At last Friday’s ABA annual meeting, Bill Hinman (with the standard disclaimer that he is speaking for himself and not on behalf of the SEC) confirmed that the SEC will not be delaying implementation of the CEO pay ratio rule, which will require most public companies to report the pay ratio in their 2018 proxy statements, for the first fiscal year beginning on or after...

Equifax Data Breach: Preliminary Lessons for the Adoption and Implementation of Insider Trading Policies

Equifax Data Breach: Preliminary Lessons for the Adoption and Implementation of Insider Trading Policies

Insider trading allegations have surfaced at Equifax, a credit rating agency that last week announced a data breach that could potentially affect 143 million consumers in the United States, nearly half of the country’s population. SEC filings show that three Equifax executives sold nearly $2 million in shares of the company’s common stock days after the cyberattack was discovered but before the news was publicly...