On August 17, the SEC adopted amendments to its rules and regulations to simplify public company disclosures by eliminating duplicative, outdated or overlapping requirements. Most of the changes are highly technical, and in many cases SEC rules will still require substantially the same disclosure, although perhaps in a new location. Some of the minor but helpful changes for most companies include:
Much has already been written about Elon Musk’s famous tweet offering to take Tesla private. Most of the coverage has focused on whether he violated Regulation FD’s prohibition on selective disclosure by communicating material nonpublic information through Twitter, rather than a more recognized channel of communication, or whether he violated Rule 10b-5 by lacking a sufficient basis for his claim to have “funding secured.”
What is perhaps more surprising is that,… More
Companies that will qualify as “smaller reporting companies” for the first time under the SEC’s recently revised definition should consider whether to take advantage of the simplified reporting requirements that will become available to them on September 10, the effective date of the new rule. For example, a calendar-year issuer that qualified as a smaller reporting company as of June 29, 2018 (the last business day of its second fiscal quarter) can comply with the smaller reporting company disclosure requirements in its Form 10-Q for the third quarter of 2018. … More
On August 7, 2018, the SEC brought a settled cease-and-desist proceeding against Ribbon Communications Inc., the successor to Sonus Networks, Inc., and two of its executives for issuing quarterly guidance that was not reasonably based on the available facts.
In October 2014, Sonus announced that it expected to generate $74 million of revenue in the first quarter of 2015. Sonus reaffirmed this guidance on January 8,… More