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:
…
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…
On April 3, 2019, Sen. Elizabeth Warren introduced a new bill entitled the Corporate Executive Accountability Act that would allow negligent executive officers to be prosecuted for a corporation’s wrongdoings. According to the proposed bill, an executive officer of any corporation with more than $1 billion annual revenue, who negligently permits or fails to prevent…
The House Financial Services Committee recently passed H.R. 1815, which is the Securities and Exchange Commission Disclosure Effectiveness Testing Act. The legislation would require that the SEC engage in investor testing of any new disclosure intended for retail investors. The testing should include a qualitative testing in the form of one-on-one interviews with retail…
As we have previously blogged, a number of Congressmen have committed to introduce legislation that would limit or even prohibit the ability of a public company to repurchase its own stock. There is a Schumer-Sanders bill that would prohibit a public company from buying back its own stock unless the company has committed to, and…
Last week, the US Senate Banking Committee held a hearing on legislation introduced in the prior session of Congress relating to capital formation in order to assess whether any would garner bipartisan support. In the case of quite a number of bills that had been introduced in, and been passed in, the House of Representatives,…
