It is already well understood that there has been a change in direction at the SEC under the current Trump Administration and SEC Chair Paul Atkins. In a speech earlier this week at the New York Stock Exchange entitled “Revitalizing America’s Markets at 250,” Atkins described the ways in which he thought the agency in recent times has lost its direction, particularly with respect to its public company disclosure requirements. With the stated aim of restoring its original mission, Atkins identified two main public company disclosure reform goals for the agency. He also set out “three pillars” to “make IPOs great again.” Atkins’s IPO-related remarks include brief but noteworthy comments about securities class action litigation reform that have largely been overlooked in the press coverage of his speech.Continue Reading SEC Chair Paul Atkins and Public Company Disclosure Reform

As noted in @Sarah Abrams’s recent guest post (here), President Trump last week proposed in a social media post changing the periodic reporting requirements for public companies from quarterly to semi-annual. Based on a separate interview of SEC Chair Paul Atkins published last week, it appears that the agency is prepared to move forward quickly with this proposal. We can expect to hear a lot of debate in the coming days about whether the proposed changed reporting requirements are a good idea. The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article on Saturday about the proposed change, clearly coming down on the side that the proposed change is not a good idea. As discussed below, the article also had some interesting information and comparisons that will add to the discussion about the proposal.Continue Reading All the Problems with Eliminating Quarterly Reporting

Sarah Abrams

In a social media post earlier this week, President Trump proposed eliminating quarterly reporting for public companies. In the following guest post, Sarah Abrams, Head of Claims Baleen Specialty, a division of Bowhead Specialty, takes a look at the President’s proposal and considers its prospects and potential implications. I would like to thank

September is here. Labor Day has come and gone. Time to put away the swim trunks, parasols, flip flops, bungee cords, ukuleles, sun screen, boomerangs, bongos, snorkels, vorpal blades, and unicycles, and get back to work. Yes, it is time to answer all those emails and return all of those phone messages. And most importantly of all, it is time to catch up on what has been happening in the world of directors’ and officers’ liability and insurance. Here is what happened while you were out.
Continue Reading While You Were Out

In yet another one of his early morning messages, late last week President Donald Trump stirred up a squall by suggesting in a tweet that the SEC should study doing away with quarterly reporting requirements in favor of a system of semi-annual reports. The suggestion fits within the larger debate about whether or not reporting companies have an excessively short-term focus and the related but separate debate about whether regulatory requirements impose excessive costs on businesses. The idea of eliminating quarterly reporting raises a number of important issues, and may raise some important questions for the D&O insurance industry as well.
Continue Reading Is it Time to End Quarterly Reporting?