December 19, 2011 – 11:14 pm
Private companies contemplating an IPO – and small caps debating whether it’s worth it to stay public – sometimes tally up the costs of complying with Sarbanes-Oxley, filing SEC reports, releasing earnings and so on. Now Ernst & Young has gathered data from 26 companies that did IPOs in the past two years to come up with an [...]
As the new reality of “say on pay” votes by shareholders settles in, a guiding strategy for companies should be to have your own say. Investor relations professionals (and senior execs) need to learn how to communicate more clearly and proactively on pay and governance. By last week, 20 U.S. companies had lost (failed to get [...]
The April 2011 Harvard Business Review is “The Failure Issue” – with lots of good stories and lessons. In one, former Blockbuster CEO John Antioco talks about his run-in with activist investor Carl Icahn – and Icahn responds (both available here). Two different views emerge, as you might guess, from the corporate raider who calls Blockbuster “the [...]
January 25, 2011 – 10:48 pm
The Securities and Exchange Commission adopted final rules on “Say on Pay” and other executive compensation requirements under the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. Starting now, most companies must get an advisory vote of shareholders on executive compensation at least every three years. And ask stockholders how often they want to offer their say on pay. And get input on [...]
Today President Obama signed into law the far-reaching expansion of federal regulation of US banking and capital markets. The overhaul has been brewing in Washington since the financial crisis in 2008 – and the 848-page heft of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (PDF here) may have something to do with the [...]
November 20, 2009 – 10:52 pm
If you work with the proxy statement or other communications on executive pay, you should read the Nov. 9 speech by Shelley Parratt, deputy director of the SEC Division of Corporation Finance, to the 4th Annual Proxy Disclosure Conference.
Parratt calls on companies to improve the quality of their Compensation Disclosure & Analysis sections – giving clearer, [...]
