Tag Archives | Dodd-Frank

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Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility: CHOICE Act

The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a coalition of institutional investors representing $200 billion in invested capital that engage corporations on the environmental and social impacts of their operations, sent a letter yesterday to all U.S. Senators urging them not to pass the Financial CHOICE Act. The proposed legislation, which passed the House and is currently […]

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Take Action: Comments on SEC Pay Ratio Rule Due 12/2/2013

The deadline for submitting comments on the SEC’s proposed pay ratio disclosure is coming up quickly on December 2, 2013. SEC general comment instructions. Submit Comments on S7-07-13 Pay Ratio Disclosure. Get your comments in soon, before Thanksgiving. Another advantage to earlier submittal is that those who wait for the deadline are likely to borrow from previous […]

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Take Action: Comments on SEC Pay Ratio Rulemaking Due December 2

Last week the SEC finally proposed rules to require public companies to disclose the pay ratio between their CEO and their employees, as mandated by Dodd-Frank. Companies would have to disclose the ratio between CEO compensation and the median pay of their employees. Update: Comments due December 2nd. As reported by the WSJ,  the ratio of “average” […]

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2013 Millstein Forum: Deconstruction of SIFIs and Capital Allocation

The following are cryptic notes and a few photos taken at the 2013 Millstein Forum held June 24 & 25 at Columbia Law School. Be sure to check out the Forum’s photo gallery for more photos, agenda, notes, etc. Moderator: Ira M. Millstein, Chair, Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership at the Columbia Law School; Counsel, Systemic Risk Council; Senior Partner, […]

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Noteworthy Proposal to Cap Pay Ratio at Microsoft (MSFT)

A proposal by Qube Investment Management, which owns 10,208 shares of Microsoft ($MSFT), to cap pay has been challenged through the “no-action” process. See incoming correspondence to the SEC. The resolved clause of Qube’s proposal reads as follows: Resolved: The the Board of Directors and/or the Compensation Committee limit the average individual total compensation of […]

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Review: Whistleblower Laws

In The Successes and Failures of Whistleblower Laws, Robert G. Vaughn puts his life-long interest in perspective. A background with Nader’s Raiders studying federal agencies, work as an attorney representing whistleblowers, academic research and insights gained through study abroad facilitate Vaughn’s ability to evaluate the laws through theory and practice, stories and themes. From Stanley Milgram […]

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Corporate Directors Forum: Day 1, Part 2

Below are some relatively quick notes I took at the Corporate Directors Forum 2013, held on the beautiful campus of the University of San Diego, January 27-29, 2013. See materials, Corporate Directors Forum 2013: Bonus Session, and Corporate Directors Forum 2013 – Day 1, Part 1. The program was subject to the Chatham House Rule, so there will be little in […]

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Event: The Role of Proxy Advisory Firms

The U.S. Chamber Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness (CCMC) will hold a half-day event on Wednesday, December 5, 2012 in Washington DC to take an in-depth look at the influence of proxy advisors and the state of corporate governance in the U.S. It would be nice to get some shareowners out to at least listen and report back to […]

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Corporate Governance Bites

Continuing challenges to exclusive forum bylaw provisions – Lexology An increasingly popular trend in recent years has been the adoption by Delaware public companies of an exclusive forum provision in their bylaws. An exclusive forum provision generally provides for the Delaware Court of Chancery to be the exclusive forum for certain disputes (including derivative actions, breach […]

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Video Friday: Clawback Invoked

With the passage of the Dodd-Frank and the Sarbanes Oxley Acts, clawback policies have become increasingly prevalent among public companies. However, it is rare to find a company actually put a clawback policy into effect. Citing Equilar’s findings from the 2012 Clawback Policies Report, we review what a clawback policy is and we examine what […]

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1st Dodd-Frank Whistleblower Report

Even thought the SEC’s final regulations for the Dodd-Frank whistleblower program just became effective on August 12, 2011, the agency has already filed its first report on the whistleblower program. During the first seven weeks of the program, the agency received 334 whistleblower tips. The SEC itself cautions that “due to the relatively recent launch of the […]

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Pay Ratios and Ratcheting

Daniel F. Pedrotty, AFL-CIO, posted Why CEO-to-Worker Pay Ratios Matter to Investors to the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulations on Thursday August 11. I’ve been meaning to mention it since then, mostly so that I have it file on my blog for future reference. I’ve got almost 16 years of […]

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Say-on-Pay Voting Standards Released

Yesterday, the United States Proxy Exchange (USPX) released standards for shareowners to use in making say-on-pay voting decisions.  “Say-on-pay” rules mandated by Dodd-Frank allow shareowners to express an opinion on executive compensation at annual meetings. But to make informed voting decisions, shareowners must first assess the compensation packages boards propose. That is not easy, since […]

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Video Friday: Say-On-Pay Lawsuits, Crazy? + Daily Show Bonus

This Week in the Boardroom: 7/14/11 TK Kerstetter, President, Corporate Board Member; Scott Cutler, Executive Vice President, NYSE Euronext; and Stephen Lamb, Partner, Paul Weiss discuss the fact that losing a say-on-pay vote increases the likelihood of a shareowner lawsuit. See also Frivolous Say on Pay Lawsuits: Another Unintended Consequence. This seems like a no-brainer to me. Over […]

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What Would Proxy Access Look Like if Done Right?

The Business Roundtable and Chamber of Commerce made their case and the Court found the SEC rulemaking on proxy access arbitrary and capricious “for having failed once again… to adequately assess the economic effects of a new rule.” The SEC rules certainly didn’t come out the way Les Greenberg and I envisioned when we petitioned […]

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Regulatory Reforms on Board Composition Have Been a Plus

New research from Cesare Fracassi of the Department of Finance at the University of Texas at Austin and Geoffrey Tate of the Department of Finance at the University of California, Los Angeles finds that board composition should be a continuing target of regulatory reforms. Our results suggest that having directors with external network ties to the CEO may undermine […]

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Directors Should Thank Dodd-Frank

Eleanor Bloxham, a contributor to Fortune magazine, tells readers Why corporate directors should thank Dodd and Frank. With investors focused on “say-on-pay,” ISS recommendations against directors are down substantially. Ture, but this isn’t likely to last. Most institutional investors seem to be taking a year off from voting against compensation committee members, giving them a free […]

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CorpGov and Exec Pay

GovernanceMetrics International recently sampled large corporations and found that CEO pay jumped 27% in 2010 to a median of $9 million. According to William Lazonick, professor at the University of Massachusetts, in 2010 the S&P 500 jumped 12.8%, capping a two-year gain of 39.3%. Companies in the S&P 500 boosted profits by 47% in 2010, […]

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SWOP Reaches Tipping Point

The debate over the best frequency for “say on pay” votes has reached a tipping point, as a majority of S&P 500 and Russell 3000 firms have urged their investors to support annual advisory votes on executive compensation. As required by the Dodd-Frank Act, this year’s corporate proxy statements include a “say when” vote that […]

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Deregulation of Derivatives Caused the Crisis

Lynn A. Stout argues the credit crisis was not due primarily to changes in the markets, it was due to changes in the law, specifically the Commodities Futures Modernization Act (CFMA) of 2000’s sudden and wholesale removal of centuries-old legal constraints on speculative trading in over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives. Derivative contracts are probabilistic bets on future […]

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Corporate Governance Legal Requirements

Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP produced a good legal primer, Corporate Governance: An Overview of Public Company Requirements, last month. Read it now before it is out of date. Covers Sarbanes-Oxley, Dodd-Frank, and listing requirements in eleven sections: Director Independence Audit Committees Compensation Committees Nominating Committees Compensation Codes of Conduct Certifications Directors/Officers Disclosure Foreign Issuers […]

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SEC Proposes Whistleblower Regulations

SEC Proposes New Whistleblower Program Under Dodd-Frank Act (Press Release No. 2010-213; November 3, 2010. Section 922 of the Dodd Frank bill gives the SEC the authority to make awards to whistleblowers under regulations prescribed by the SEC of  not less than 10 percent, in total, of what has been collected of the monetary sanctions […]

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Bainbridge Guide to Dodd-Frank

In his paper, The Corporate Governance Provisions of Dodd-Frank, Stephen M. Bainbridge  provides a brief overview of the seven principal corporate governance provisions of The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (better known as “The Dodd-Frank Act”). Section 951 creates a so-called “say on pay” mandate, requiring periodic shareholder advisory votes on […]

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Financial Sustainability: Restoring Market Stability, Corporate Value & Public Trust (ICGN Mid-Year 2010)

Disclaimer: Given Dodd-Frank, proxy plumbing and all those comments I want to provide the SEC, the report below doesn’t do the ICGN Mid-Year Conference justice.  I wrote this up more than a week later with poor notes and memory. Comments, corrections and substitute photos are solicited. Sharing Perspectives Across the Atlantic. Phil Angelides, Lord McFall […]

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SEC Access and Dodd-Frank Calendar

The SEC published Rule 14a-11 providing proxy access in the Federal Register (.pdf).  The rule is effective 60 days after being published in the Federal Register, or November 15, 2010. Any issuer whose one year anniversary for mailing date is prior to March 15, 2011 will not be subject to a proxy access campaign in 2011. (Hat […]

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Video Friday

For humor, view Life After Death by Powerpoint 2010 by Don McMillan. I haven’t read the book but here’s the trailer for Freakonomics. (Not much content in the trailer… even they end saying something like total BS… I guess that’s hip.) Rules of the Board – Corporate Board Rules (PBS), how much shareholders can expect […]

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