CONGRESS SEEKS CHANGES TO REGULATION S-K

摘要

The highway funding bill Congress passed in December 2015 contains two separate though related corporate reporting provisions. The first one gives the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) 180 days to issue a regulation permitting companies to submit a summary page on Form 10-K. That same 180-day deadline applies to the second corporate reporting provision, a much more expansive mandate on the Commission to propose and then implement changes to Regulation S-K. Congress wants the SEC "to further scale or eliminate" the burden on emerging growth companies, accelerated filers, and smaller reporting companies as well as for all companies to eliminate provisions "that are duplicative, overlapping, outdated, or unnecessary; and improve the readability and navigability of disclosure documents so as to discourage repetition and the disclosure of immaterial information." The SEC has one year in which to issue a report on how it would implement those changes and another year after the report is issued to publish a proposed rule making the changes in S-K.