All you executives in charge of corporate disclosure or investor relations, take heart: The Securities and Exchange Commission feels your pain.

So says Meredith Cross, head of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance, who spoke this morning at the National Investor Relations Institute annual conference in San Diego. I’m at the NIRI conference as well to host a panel discussion on social media and investor relations, and will have more on that in a few days. For now, Cross is giving us enough news to start the week.

Foremost, Cross shed more light on what might be contained in the fabled “proxy plumbing project”—a broad review of federal proxy rules that the SEC has touted for several years, without ever showing us so much as a concept release, much less an actual proposal. In theory, this review will haul proxy voting rules into the modern era of shareholder activism, hedge fund trading and online communications. In practice, however, the Commission’s attention keeps getting diverted to small matters like the financial crisis or Madoff-sized Ponzi schemes, and this much-needed review moves that much further toward the horizon.

Cross said today that any substantive SEC proposals might not arrive until 2011, which means no serious reforms until at least 2012. She did promise that it will be “quite sweeping” whenever it does see the light of day, and we can expect it to cover:

Accuracy in proxy vote tabulation;

The risks of empty voting and over-voting;

The distinction between “Objecting Beneficial Owners” and “Non-Objecting Beneficial Owners,” including whether the OBO/NOBO difference should continue;

The role of proxy advisory firms; and

Communication among shareholders.

None of those points are particularly surprising. But one telling moment came when Cross was asked about the OBO/NOBO distinction, a rule that prevents companies from knowing who many of their shareholders actually are. Investor relations officers regularly complain that OBO/NOBO thwarts their efforts to foster good communication with shareholders, and Cross admitted, “Our current rules aren’t making that any easier.” I take that as a hint that perhaps the days of the OBO/NOBO distinction are numbered.

Of course, we still need to see an actual concept from the SEC before any of this is more than conjecture, and when that might happen is still anyone’s guess.

Cross had a few other morsels of news as well…

Web disclosure. Earlier this year we saw Google ruffle some feathers when it announced that it would no longer disseminate earnings release by wire service; instead, it only announces that its earnings are available for all to see on its Website (via wire service and Form 8-K filing), and posts the full details there. Cross wasn’t terribly enamored of this idea; while she didn't mention Google directly, she pointedly said, “I am not commenting on whether this is a best practice … I do think that companies considering this approach should consider the investor relation implications.”

But, she added, the SEC does not necessarily frown on this practice either. So long as a company publishes a press release announcing that the earnings data is available on the corporate Website or 8-K filing, then it doesn't need to worry about the SEC's guidance from 2008 about whether the Website is a legitimate avenue of communication, and can proceed down this path if it chooses. (I personally suspect that the number of investors unhappy with this practice falls somewhere between zero and, well, zero. I have never heard any investor tell me he or she feels unable to keep current with a company's earnings news.)

Regulation Fair Disclosure. Cross called Reg FD “a big success” as it celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. “Everyone thought when it was implemented that it was the end of the world … I think it’s now engrained in our system.” She did warn that the SEC continues to see the need for enforcement of Reg FD “from time to time.” We may be in one of those times, since the Commission has settled two Reg FD enforcement actions in recent months, for the first time in years.

Risk Disclosure. Cross couched her words carefully, but she also hinted that the SEC is not entirely thrilled with the quality of disclosure in Form 10-Ks and proxy statements about risk. Too often, she said, companies are good at plain disclosure of a risk, but then remain silent on what plans they might have to do something about that risk. Cross said the SEC staff is mulling whether to recommend that companies must say more: “If the risks are important, then the company probably has a plan.”

Likewise, the SEC is considering—and only considering—revisiting the rules for the Compensation Discussion and Analysis in the proxy statement, because companies still fall short on thoughtful discussion of executive pay. The SEC wants to see better, fuller discussion of why executive officers are making the amounts they’re making, and not just the precise compensation totals.

More to come later this week as news dictates.

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