VEA Vice Chair appeared with a distinguished panel of investor advocates to brief Senate staffers this week on the SEC’s appalling new rule restricting shareholder proposals. The rulemaking process violated the Administrative Procedure Act and cost-benefit guidelines. Other panelists were Josh Zinner of ICCR, Brandon Rees of AFL-CIO, and Kyle Seeley of the New York…
Tag: sec
Jim McRitchie’s Letter to the New SEC Chair, Gary Gensler
Jim McRitchie has written to incoming SEC Chairman Gary Gensler with a list of suggested priorities. An excerpt: With your knowledge of blockchains, you are in a perfect position to reconnect the link between shares, ownership, and responsibilities lost in disintermediation. One study found sixteen intermediaries between a Main Street investor and their investments (What…
Toomey Presses SEC on New Climate Enforcement Task Force | United States Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
U.S. Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) wants more information from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) about its recently announced climate and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) enforcement task force. In a letter to Acting Chair Allison Herren Lee, Senator Toomey wrote: “These announcements appear to presage major changes in longstanding…
More Slippery Fallacies from the Hypocritical WSJ Editorial Board: Proxy Voting Edition
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board is often described as “ultra-right.” If only that were true. Instead, they are “ultra-CEO entrenching.” While they claim to support robust free markets, when it comes time for actual market tests, they always cry out for protection from big, scary providers of capital, even the massive financial institutions they…
Acting SEC Chair Lee on Proxy Voting
Acting SEC Chair Allison Herren Lee made a groundbreaking speech about proxy voting to the attendees at the Mutual Funds and Investment Management Conference. We publish it here in full with emphasis added. 2021 ICI Mutual Funds and Investment Management Conference March 17, 2021 Good afternoon everyone, and thank you to the ICI for inviting…
SEC May Adopt ESG Disclosure Standards
Harvard Law School’s John Coates, Acting head of the SEC’s Division of Corporate Finance, told attendees at an International finance conference that the SEC may adopt ESG disclosure standards. This is another step toward the SEC’s recognizing that ESG data is material information relating to investment risk. And he made it clear that the SEC…
SEC Announces Enforcement Task Force Focused on Climate and ESG Issues
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced the creation of a Climate and ESG Task Force in the Division of Enforcement. The task force will be led by Kelly L. Gibson, the Acting Deputy Director of Enforcement, who will oversee a Division-wide effort, with 22 members drawn from the SEC’s headquarters, regional offices, and Enforcement specialized…
SEC denies J&J request to exclude racial-audit proposal | Corporate Secretary
The SEC has rejected a request from Johnson & Johnson that it exclude from its proxy statement a shareholder proposal that it conduct a ‘civil rights audit.’ Trillium Asset Management, on behalf of Christopher and Anne Ellinger, has submitted the measure requesting that Johnson & Johnson ‘conduct and publish a third-party audit… to review its…
Senator Warren Calls on the SEC to Address Stock Market Gamesmanship Amid Volatile GameStop Trades
United States Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.); a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs; sent a letter to Acting Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Allison Herren Lee requesting that the agency provide Congress and the public information on how they will address the dramatic swings in market valuation of GameStop…
Joe Biden must take a global lead on climate risk disclosure | Financial Times
This is especially powerful because one of the authors is Robert Herz, former Chairman of FASB. Ideally, Mr Biden would be able to win bipartisan support for his policies. But, even with a sharply divided US Congress, the Biden administration can make significant progress on issues such as climate risk by using executive orders and…
