On July 2, the SEC announced that The Dow Chemical Company agreed to settle charges related to the company’s inadequate perquisites disclosure in SEC filings by paying a civil penalty in the amount of $1.75 million, hiring an independent consultant to evaluate and recommend changes to the company’s policies and procedures relating to perquisites disclosure, and implementing such changes.
The SEC’s order finds that from 2011 through 2015, Dow did not ensure that approximately $3 million in executive perquisites were adequately evaluated and disclosed as “other compensation” in the Compensation Discussion & Analysis (CD&A) section of its annual proxy statements. These authorized but undisclosed perquisites included personal use of the Dow aircraft and other expenses.
Bass, Berry & Sims attorneys Britt Latham and Brian Irving authored an article that was published in The D&O Diary that outlined and discussed the most important trends and developments related to SEC investigations and enforcement proceedings impacting the industry this past year and likely to impact the industry in the coming year. The article includes a discussion of lessons learned from the first year of the Trump administration.
In a recently published Accounting Today article, I provided insight on the impact of the new audit report standard from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), which was approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on October 23. The new standard — which is the first significant change to the audit report in over 70 years – expands the scope of the audit report by requiring a discussion of “critical audit matters” and a disclosure of auditor tenure.
In a Bloomberg BNA article, I provided insight on what future additional updates the SEC Staff could be focusing on following the Commission’s announcement of proposed amendments to Regulation S-K last week. The article quotes Elizabeth Murphy, an associate director in the SEC Division of Corporation Finance, from an October 18 Association of Corporate Counsel conference discussion saying the SEC has “more to come from our Reg S-K disclosure initiative,” but did not specify any particular recommendations to Regulation S-K the Commission plans to focus on. I noted that the Staff might continue to focus on MD&A disclosures and Regulation S-K’s Item 101, the narrative description of the business. In those areas, many comments on the concept release urged the SEC to “move from prescriptive rules to a more principles-based approach,” I explained in the article. “Given how fundamental these S-K sections are to SEC filings generally, it seems reasonable to believe the SEC Staff would develop recommendations to these rules for Commission consideration.”