New York Times (November 18)
“An under-the-radar lawsuit has privately been a hot topic of conversation in Fortune 500 boardrooms and corporate security departments.” The suit by the SEC against SolarWinds and its chief information security officer appears to be the first lawsuit “in which the S.E.C. has charged a company with intentional fraud related to cybersecurity disclosures.” The suit suggests “boilerplate disclosures” are no longer “sufficient if the company knows of more specific risks.”
Tags: Boardrooms, Boilerplate, CISO, Corporate security, Cybersecurity disclosures, Fortune 500, Fraud, Lawsuit, SEC, SolarWinds, Specific risks, Under-the-radar
Markets Insider (October 16)
SEC Chair Gary Gensler “has warned that AI could trigger a financial crisis, as Wall Street rushes to adopt the new technology.” He is calling for “AI regulation that addresses both the underlying AI models built by tech companies and how they are used by Wall Street banks, describing it as a ‘cross-regulatory challenge.’”
Tags: Adopt, AI, Banks, Chair, Financial Crisis, Gensler, Models, New technology, Regulation, Rushes, SEC, Trigger, Wall Street, Warned
Bloomberg (June 7)
“The Securities and Exchange Commission has fired a major new salvo in Chair Gary Gensler’s war on crypto, declaring illegal two of the world’s largest digital-token trading platforms, Binance and Coinbase. It’s a welcome development: In myriad ways, the two enterprises exemplify what financial intermediaries shouldn’t do. What’s needed now is an actual rulebook.”
Tags: Binance, Chair, Coinbase, Digital-token trading platforms, Financial intermediaries. Rulebook, Gensler, Illegal, SEC, War on crypto
Institutional Investor (May 31)
Last December, “the SEC proposed a set of trading reforms detailing significant changes on vital features such as tick size, the access fee cap, and competition for retail orders.” NASDAQ broadly supports the moves, but worries that “they may not accomplish what the SEC is trying to accomplish” or lead to “unintended consequences that harm liquidity.” Instead, NASDAQ and others believe the SEC “should sequence the proposals rather than do them simultaneously and pause periodically to assess the impacts and determine whether additional reforms are warranted.”
Tags: Access fee cap, Assess, Competition, December, Impacts, Liquidity, Nasdaq, Proposals, Retail orders, SEC, Sequence, Tick size, Trading reforms, Unintended consequences
Reuters (May 6)
The SEC and its Chair Gary Gensler have refused to “make clear how existing securities laws apply to digital assets.” From their perspective, “there’s little upside in breaking the silence.” If they state digital assets are securities, “Gensler would have to show his reasoning, opening the SEC up to more costly legal battles that it could lose.” By refusing to rule make, “the agency can keep firing off enforcement actions.”
Tags: Costly, Digital assets, Eforcement actions, Gensler, Laws, Legal battles, Reasoning, Refusing, Rule make, SEC, Securities, Silence, Upside
Wall Street Journal (May 4)
“Companies will need to jump through more hoops to buy back their stock.” A new rule adopted by the SEC will require “more disclosure from public companies about share repurchases starting in the fourth quarter,” including daily data on buybacks, whether directors or officers sold shares within four days of a buyback, and the rationale for the buyback. The SEC believes this will “make it easier for analysts to compare the timing of buybacks and insider trades, or to identify buybacks designed to boost executive compensation or earnings per share.”
Tags: Analysts, Buybacks, Directors, Disclosure, EPS, Executive compensation, Hoops, Insider trades, Officers, Public companies, Q4, Rationale, SEC, Share repurchases, Stock, Timing
USA Today (March 21)
“Groundbreaking federal regulation unveiled Monday could change how Americans – and American companies – think about climate change.” A proposed SEC rule would require listed “companies to disclose the risks they face from global warming. Much as homebuyers are protected by rules requiring a seller to disclose problems, the new SEC rule would allow investors to judge how well or poorly a company is prepared for the future costs of a warming planet.”
Tags: Climate change, Future costs, Global warming, Groundbreaking, Homebuyers, Investors, Judge, Protected, Regulation, Risks, Rule, rule Disclose, SEC, U.S.
American Banker (March 21)
“A new Securities and Exchange Commission proposal would require public companies to report climate-related risks across their value chain. That could be especially difficult if it means banks have to account for their borrowers’ emissions.”
Tags: Banks, Climate-related risks, Difficult, Proposal, Public companies, Report, Require, SEC, Value chain
Financial Times (December 23)
In a “win for activists that signals trouble for other US companies,” the SEC “has rejected Apple’s petition to block three shareholder proposals from going to a vote at its next annual meeting…. Last month, the regulator changed its policies to make it harder for companies to win regulatory support to reject investor petitions.”
Tags: Activists, AGM, Apple, Investor, Petition, Petitions, Policies, Regulator, Reject, SEC, Shareholder proposals, Signals, Trouble, Vote, Win
Chief Investment Officer (March 26)
“The new leadership at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) continues to make environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing one of its top priorities. And now, the commission has launched a new webpage to provide information on ESG-related investing and agency actions…. The SEC is asking its staff to evaluate disclosure rules with an eye on facilitating the disclosure of ‘consistent, comparable, and reliable information on climate change.’”
Tags: Comparable, Consistent, Disclosure, ESG, Evaluate, Investing, Leadership, Priorities, Reliable, Rules, SEC, Webpage
