Preview of Coming Attractions, and a Movie Review

The past few weeks have been fairly slow in terms of new developments in securities law, corporate governance and executive compensation. However, summer's over, and I'm expecting a flurry in the next few weeks. Take a look back at the ON Securities Cheat Sheet - a lot of these developments are likely to change as we head into the fall:

Congress is back in session, and we are likely to see action on the Corporate and Financial Institution Compensation Fairness Act of 2009, passed by the House in July. Congress will likely try to reconcile that bill with the other legislation described in the Cheat Sheet, and I would expect that something will be enacted by the end of the year. Virtually every bill would require Say-on-Pay for public companies, but we don't know when the requirement will go into effect.

Comment periods are ending for the SEC's proposed proxy disclosure and solicitation rules and the proposed shareholder access rules. The SEC will almost certainly adopt the disclosure and solicitation rules this fall. As described in "Shareholder Access Update: Who's that knockin' at the boardroom door?" action on the shareholder access rules is more uncertain.

The SEC and Treasury Department may further clarify compensation standards for financial institutions that received TARP funds - including the SEC's proposed rules to clarify Say-on-Pay standards for TARP recipients (maybe a preview of what Say-on-Pay will look like for other public companies).

Companies preparing their proxy statements for annual meetings held starting on January 1, 2010 will be dealing with the reality of the elimination of broker discretionary voting, described in "Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid - Preparing for the Elimination of Broker Discretionary Voting."

We'll be watching carefully - as Siskel and Ebert used to say, "The Balcony Is Open".