Glassman Exits SEC; Roundtable Details; More

After four years at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Republican Commissioner Cynthia Glassman, the longest serving of the SEC’s five current commissioners, announced last week that she will resign at the end of her term next month.

Glassman

“With my term ending in June 2006, I have decided that it will soon be time for me to move on,” Glassman wrote in a May 15 letter to President George W. Bush, in which she called her tenure as commissioner “the most exciting and fulfilling position” of her 35-year career.

Glassman hasn’t set a date for her departure and said she plans to stay to ensure a smooth transition for her successor. While her term ends June 5, the SEC noted in its announcement that commissioners typically stay on at the Commission for up to 18 months after their term expires if they aren’t replaced. The Bush Administration has indicated it will nominate Kathleen Casey, a staffer on the Senate Banking Committee, as a replacement.

Glassman, appointed by Bush in January 2002, served as acting chairman during the summer of 2005 while current Chairman Christopher Cox’s confirmation was pending. In her years at the agency, Glassman championed investor education, enhanced disclosure, and increased use of economic analysis in SEC rulemaking. She is credited with heading the initiative that led to the establishment of an $85 million investor education fund from the 2003 global settlement of research analyst conflict-of-interest charges.

Cox

Cox, who called Glassman “a stalwart proponent of investor protection, investor education, and clear disclosure,” said her perspective as an economist has been “invaluable, ensuring that the agency’s decisions are always based on a thorough examination of the economic consequences to investors and markets.”

Prior to her appointment to the SEC, Glassman spent five years at Ernst & Young. She also served 12 years at the Federal Reserve Bank and more than a decade in consulting positions in the private sector. She previously taught economics at the University of Cambridge, England, where she remains senior member of Lucy Cavendish College.

Transcript Of SOX Section 404 Gets Posted

For all those compliance fanatics who crave still more coverage of the debate on Section 404 and Auditing Standard No. 2, the SEC has posted the unedited transcript of its widely discussed May 10 roundtable on the second year of implementation of the internal control reporting provisions.

The complete record of the all-day discussion—all 341 pages of it—can be found in the box at right. Also available at right is Compliance Week's coverage of the roundtable, which is a bit more brief.

Nasdaq Answers Questions On Transition To National Exchange

Nasdaq has posted a list of frequently asked questions about its transition to a national stock exchange.

The SEC approved Nasdaq’s application to register as a national securities exchange in January; Nasdaq said it expects the operational date to be in the second quarter of 2006, but notes that the actual date may be delayed due to the need to satisfy conditions of the SEC’s approval order.

Nasdaq said it will file an application to register the securities of its listed companies under Section 12(b) the day before it commences operations as an exchange (or to seek a temporary continuation of an existing exemption from registration) so that no action is necessary on the part of its listed companies, unless they choose to opt out of that process on or before May 30.

Other than the change in registration type, Nasdaq said the effect on its listed companies will be minimal. Current listing standards and fees stay the same, and the initial and continued listing processes and procedures will remain essentially unchanged. The delisting process will be modified slightly to conform with SEC requirements for exchange delistings. Nasdaq plans to post an online Nasdaq Rules Manual prior to the operational date.

The FAQ and related coverage can be found at the box at right.

XBRL Roundtable Discussion Will Cover Fund Disclosures

The SEC said it plans to place a special emphasis on mutual funds at an upcoming public forum on ways that interactive data can improve disclosure for ordinary investors.

Representatives from consumer organizations, the mutual fund industry and Commission officials will consider how technology, including interactive data, can provide the country’s millions of mutual fund investors with better information at an SEC roundtable scheduled for June 12 at the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.

As part of its ongoing push to promote interactive data and the use of eXtensible Business Reporting Language, the SEC announced in March that it would hold a roundtable to look at the more general topic of how interactive data could be used to serve the needs of analysts and investors in all kinds of securities.

The roundtable will review the experiences from the first year of a pilot program to use interactive data for company filings with the SEC. About a dozen companies participated in the first year of a voluntary program to test the use of XBRL. The roundtable will also use the lessons learned from the pilot program to develop new ways to get analysts and investors better information.

Topics will include what investors and analysts are looking for in interactive data; how to accelerate the use of new software that permits the dissemination of interactive financial data; and how to best design the SEC’s requirements for company disclosures to take maximum advantage of the potential of interactive data. The SEC plans to announce additional details on the program agenda and panelists at a later date.

Details from the SEC, as well as related Compliance Week coverage, can be found in the box at right.