Pending Legislation

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On February 18, 2022, the US Senate unanimously passed the Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act, which requires all US federal judges to publish their financial disclosure reports to the public. This legislation closely follows the bipartisan bill passed by the House in December 2021, which sought a similar outcome (see our related post…

Recent investigations share findings that over 130 US Federal judges presided over cases in which they had a financial conflict of interest since 2010.  In a 422-4 vote this week, the House passed a bipartisan bill that would require US federal judges to share their financial disclosure reports publicly.

Under this bill designed, which is…

Two pieces of legislation aimed at imposing additional regulations on special purpose acquisition companies (“SPACs”) were recently introduced in the US House of Representatives.  H.R. 5910, the “Holding SPACs Accountable Act of 2021,” sponsored by Rep. Michael San Nicolas (D-GU), and H.R. 5913, the “Protecting Investors from Excessive SPACs Fees Act of 2021,” sponsored by…

The special purpose acquisition company (“SPAC”) craze took the world by storm during 2020 and early 2021. SPACs continue to dominate the finance and business news cycles, with headlines of unicorns choosing to go public through this IPO-alternative. More recently, the future of the SPAC market has been called into question, as concerns have arisen…

On April 29, 2021, Sen. John Kennedy (R) introduced the Sponsor Promote and Compensation (SPAC) Act (the “bill”), which would require the SEC to issue rules requiring enhanced disclosures for blank check companies, including SPACs, during the IPO and pre-merger stages.

Specifically, the SPAC Act calls for rules requiring the disclosure of:

  1. the amount of

…

On May 20, 2020, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved  bipartisan legislation (the “bill”) that would amend Section 104 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.  The bill would require that Chinese companies that have a class of securities listed or quoted on stock exchanges in the United States could be delisted by such exchanges for, among…

This past week, the House Financial Services Committee considered and passed a few bills that would, if passed by the House, result in changes to the securities laws. These include:

The Investor Protection and Capital Markets Fairness Act (H.R.4344), a bill by Representative Ben McAdams (D-UT), would substantially strengthen the authority of the Securities and…

Earlier this month, the U.S. House Financial Services Committee passed, with overwhelming bi-partisan support, three bills to promote gender, racial and ethnic diversity on corporate boards. Although there has been progress in diversifying board representation in recent years, the rate of change is slow. The Alliance for Board Diversity reported that among Fortune 500 companies,…

Last month, Representative Maxine Waters, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, introduced a bill entitled Bad Actor Disqualification Act of 2019 (“proposed bill”). The proposed bill is intended to increase transparency and accountability in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (“SEC”) process of providing bad actor waivers. It sets up a three-step process to request…

Recently, a bipartisan bill was introduced in Congress that would require that U.S. listed foreign companies provide U.S. regulators access to accounting records tied to audit reports.

The Ensuring Quality Information and Transparency for Abroad-Based Listings on our Exchanges Act, or the EQUITABLE Act, would prohibit the listing of the securities of foreign companies whose…