All Rules & Proposals articles – Page 55

  • Article

    New ‘Blacklisting’ Rules Have Contractors in Uproar

    2015-06-09T13:30:00Z

    Image: Uncle Sam is poised to impose sweeping new reporting obligations on government contractors to disclose labor law violations for the prior three years. Trade associations are spitting nails over the rules, but meanwhile, compliance officers have yet another reporting risk that needs process and attention. “You don’t want a ...

  • Blog

    Regulators Finalize Dodd-Frank Diversity Policies

    2015-06-09T11:30:00Z

    Under a Dodd-Frank Act requirement, federal banking regulators, the SEC, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have issued a formal policy for assessing the diversity policies and practices of the entities they regulate. The regulators call for a “model assessment” that would include a self-assessment by each covered entity of ...

  • Article

    How Do You Solve a Problem Like EDGAR?

    2015-06-09T10:00:00Z

    Image: In a way, the person who submitted false filings to the SEC last month proposing a fictional takeover of Avon Products did the corporate filing community a favor: He reminded everyone how bad the SEC’s EDGAR filing database can be. Ideas to modernize EDGAR are many; ability to achieve ...

  • Blog

    Basel Pitches Bank Rules to Remedy Interest Rate Shocks

    2015-06-08T13:30:00Z

    The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, with a consultative document released on Monday, is seeking public comment on proposals regarding what measures large banks should take, and how much reserve capital they should hold, to weather interest rate risks. More inside.

  • Blog

    SEC Offers Pay Ratio Rule Analysis for Public Comment

    2015-06-04T15:15:00Z

    The SEC still has given no sign of a final pay ratio disclosure rule, but there is a new analysis from its Division of Economic and Risk Analysis that the Commission has made available for public comment. The analysis considers the potential effects of excluding different percentages of employees from ...

  • Blog

    Survey: Shareholder Pressure Prompts Boards to Rethink Compensation

    2015-06-02T16:45:00Z

    Nearly 60 percent of companies say their boards expanded compensation explanations in proxy statements as a result of shareholder feedback, and almost one-third of those boards changed executive compensation plans outright in response to pressure from investors. Those findings come from the National Association of Corporate Directors and respondents to ...

  • Blog

    Warren: SEC Chair’s Tenure ‘Extremely Dissapointing’

    2015-06-02T15:15:00Z

    Image: Sen. Elizabeth Warren, (D-Mass.), at left, fired with both barrels at SEC Chairman Mary Jo White this week, in a blistering 13-page letter describing White’s tenure as “extremely disappointing” and full of “broken promises.” Among Warren’s concerns: the lack of a final pay-ratio rule and the dearth of guilt ...

  • Blog

    How Dodd-Frank Is Working—and How It Isn’t

    2015-06-01T14:30:00Z

    Image: Congress is back in session, which means another round of political bickering over reform of the Dodd-Frank Act. Alas, Compliance Week Editor Matt Kelly says, the law is already working as one would expect—that is, a little bit effectively, and a little bit stupidly. Compliance officers should not hold ...

  • Blog

    Tips on Building a Better, User-Friendly EDGAR

    2015-05-29T11:15:00Z

    A slew of business groups, from the Center for Audit Quality to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and others, have voiced their collective opinion on how the SEC can improve the EDGAR filing process. Their top recommendations were search improvements and the ability to download data in multiple formats. See ...

  • Blog

    Senator Presses SEC on Fake EDGAR Filings

    2015-05-29T10:30:00Z

    Image: In a letter to SEC Chair Mary Jo White, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) demanded more information about fake filings, including a fictitious Avon takeover bid, that somehow make their way onto the agency’s EDGAR system. “This pattern of fraudulent conduct is troubling, especially in light of the relative ease ...

  • Blog

    Former Commissioners Slam SEC for Inaction on Political Spending Rule

    2015-05-27T16:00:00Z

    The latest push to get the SEC to act on a rulemaking petition that companies disclose political contributions and spending on lobbyists: pressure from former commissioners. “The Commission’s inaction is inexplicable,” William Henry Donaldson, Arthur Levitt, and Bevis Longstreth wrote in a letter to current SEC Chair Mary Jo White. ...

  • Blog

    States Sue to Stop SEC’s Regulation A+

    2015-05-26T14:15:00Z

    In petitions filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, officials in Massachusetts and Montana, concerned by the diminished role of state securities regulators, are asking the court to vacate the Securities and Exchange Commission’s expansion of the Regulation A exemption ahead of its June 9 ...

  • Blog

    SEC Proposes New Disclosures for Investment Companies

    2015-05-22T09:45:00Z

    The SEC has proposed new rules and forms to modernize reporting for mutual funds, ETFs, and other registered investment companies. A new monthly portfolio reporting requirement, Form N-PORT, would require registered funds, other than money market funds, to provide portfolio-wide and position-level holdings data to the SEC. Details inside.

  • Article

    Dodd-Frank Reform: The Beat Goes On

    2015-05-19T13:45:00Z

    The Dodd-Frank Act may be turning five years old this summer. Fights about Dodd-Frank, on the other hand, feel like they’ve been going on forever. Washington was back at it again last week, proposing various fixes, reforms, and exemptions to all manner of Dodd-Frank, much of it to help large-ish ...

  • Blog

    CW2015: Cutting Through Compliance Complexity

    2015-05-18T14:45:00Z

    Kicking off Compliance Week 2015 in Washington D.C. on Monday, compliance experts from Boeing, Walmart, and General Electric stressed the importance of having employees take part in culture-building and breaking training into simple, direct objectives. See more from their discussion inside.

  • Blog

    Ding, Dong: EDGAR Fraud Calling

    2015-05-15T11:45:00Z

    On May 14, PTG Capital Partners, a London-based investment firm, disclosed in a regulatory filing on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR system that it offered to buy Avon for $18.75 a share. The firm, however is fictitious, raising questions of how EDGAR was gamed and why the filing was ...

  • Blog

    Survey: Overloaded CCOs Expect Increased Personal Liability

    2015-05-13T12:30:00Z

    Compliance officers have two fears on their minds these days: increased regulatory fatigue and overload; and the threat of increasing personal liability for corporate misconduct. More than one-third of all firms already spend at least one day every week simply tracking and analyzing regulatory developments, according to Thomson Reuters’ annual ...

  • Article

    As SEC Delays on Extractive Payments, World Moves Ahead

    2015-05-12T13:30:00Z

    The SEC has fought all sides on its proposed rule to disclose payments to governments for mining rights: oil and gas companies on one hand saying the rule is flawed; activists on the other saying the rule is overdue. The trouble, however, is that while the SEC tussles in court, ...

  • Blog

    Study: Social Media Befuddles Compliance

    2015-05-12T12:45:00Z

    The average Fortune 100 firm has approximately 320 social media accounts and engages with more than 210,000 “followers” annually. The problem, according to a new study, is that the pace, scale, and informal culture of corporate social media creates regulatory risks that go beyond the traditional skill set of compliance ...

  • Blog

    SEC Approves Tick-Size Pilot Program

    2015-05-11T11:45:00Z

    The SEC has approved a proposal by the national securities exchanges and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for a two-year pilot program that will widen the minimum quoting and trading increments, known as tick sizes, for stocks of some smaller companies. The program—to begin May 6, 2016—will include stocks of ...