Recent comments from SEC commissioner Luis Aguilar indicate that the SEC may consider new rules that would require public companies to disclose political expenditures.

The disclosure required by the Dodd-Frank Act appears to be close to final. The proposed rules are highly controversial because of the high costs for public companies to comply, compared to the small benefit to investors.

The No-Action Letter is good news for private companies that are approaching the statutory 500-shareholder limit. Exceeding this limit can be very painful for a company, as it may require significant disclosures of information without realizing any of the benefits of public company status.

Some smaller companies that are not listed on a national exchange and that have never filed any documents with the SEC are coming to find out that they may in fact be ‘publicly traded’ and may not even realize it.

While the Facebook IPO has been long-expected, it is important to remember the reason why Facebook decided to go public: it was required.

Earlier this month, the S.E.C. changed its long standing practice of allowing defendants of securities violations to “neither admit nor deny” criminal wrongdoing.  This change is effectively the S.E.C.’s response to critics that say that the agency should not let criminal defendants simply pay a fine and avoid an admission of guilty.  The new policy […]

Risks of Cyber Attacks If you are an executive for a public company, new SEC guidance requires you to consider cybersecurity in your ongoing periodic reports.  As evidenced by the barrage of news reports over the past couple of years, cyber incidents have become very significant events for all types of companies.  A recent example […]

Last Friday, the SEC’s Division of Corporate Finance issued its fourth topic in its CF Disclosure Series, which periodically provides the SEC’s views on various topics. This time, the SEC addressed, what it believes to be, inconsistent disclosures on European sovereign debt holdings. The SEC reminds registrants, particularly bank holding companies, of their obligations to […]

Practising Law Institute (PLI) held its 43rd Annual Institute on Securities Regulation on November 9-11 in New York City at the Hilton New York Hotel. This year, Gunster sponsored a scholarship initiative for minority law students in conjunction with PLI and the Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law. Twenty scholarships were […]