Bill Hinman, Director of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Division of Corporation Finance delivered the keynote address at the Practising Law Institute's annual Securities Regulation in Europe program. During his speech, Mr. Hinman touched on various topics, including the types of measures that may be undertaken in order to make the capital markets and the public company alternative more attractive. He discussed the accommodations available to foreign private issuers (FPIs), as well as the Division's policy changes extending the confidential submission process to companies other than emerging growth companies (EGCs). Mr. Hinman noted that since adoption of the new policy in the summer of 2017, the Commission has received draft submissions for more than 20 IPOs of companies that exceed $1 billion in revenue or otherwise do not qualify to submit as EGCs, and from over 35 companies engaged in follow-on offerings. Mr. Hinman also reiterated the willingness of the Division staff to review and consider requests made under Regulation S-X Rule 3-13 for accommodations relating to financial statement presentation.
Addressing future areas of focus, Mr. Hinman noted that the Staff is discussing ways in which internal processes, such as filing reviews and the consideration of no-action letter requests, as well as possible updates to the Financial Reporting Manual and the Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations in order to make these more user-friendly. Turning to disclosure, Mr. Hinman noted that the Staff is considering whether additional guidance would be helpful regarding cybersecurity disclosure. Mr. Hinman also provided some insight on future rulemaking. He noted that the Staff is:
- preparing recommendations for a proposal to implement the resource extraction issuer disclosure provision of the Dodd-Frank Act;
- considering rulemaking to raise the threshold companies for smaller reporting company eligibility;
- recommending final rules to update and simplify disclosure requirements that are outdated, or are overlapping or duplicative with other Commission rules or U.S. GAAP;
- preparing recommendations for proposals to amend the rules for financial information required for acquired entities (Regulation S-X Rule 3-05), as well as Regulation S-X Rule 3-10 for disclosures by guarantors and issuers of guaranteed securities; and
- developing recommendations for updating Industry Guide 3 to modernize the disclosure requirements for financial institutions.
The full text of Mr. Hinman's remarks are available here: https://www.sec.gov/news/speech/speech-hinman-020118.
Because of the generality of this update, the information provided herein may not be applicable in all situations and should not be acted upon without specific legal advice based on particular situations.
© Morrison & Foerster LLP. All rights reserved
We operate a free-to-view policy, asking only that you register in order to read all of our content. Please login or register to view the rest of this article.