TheCorporateCounsel.net

December 10, 2003

More Sample Governance Documents We

We are starting to hit our stride by posting more sample governance documents in our “Sample Library,” which is located in the bottom left side of our home page. During the past week, we have added new compensation committee evaluations and governance committee evaluations as well as new board evaluations and a board matrix.

In addition, we have posted new audit committee evaluations (now, there are 9 of them) – and we have a new audit committee financial expert questionnaire (which makes a total of 3).

In addition to today’s webcast on “The New MD&A” (to which we just added Richard Harrison, President of GSI – which runs LiveEdgar – to the panel), don’t forget tomorrow’s webcast on “The New Governance Listing Standards” – which will be full of practical guidance from in-house counsel that have already grappled with implementing many of the new standards. The panel includes: Peggy Foran of Pfizer; Jim Gunderson of Schlumberger; Cary Klafter of Intel; and Tina Van Dam of Dow Chemical.

Mulling the Security of the SEC’s Website

Today, the Washington Post ran an article about how most federal agencies flunked (again – 4th year in row) a test regarding the relative security of their computer networks and other online threats.

Seven agencies received an “F” including the Justice Department, which is charged with prosecuting many cases involving hacking and other forms of cyber-crime. The test is administered by the House Government Reform subcommittee on technology.

The SEC was not mentioned in the article and I couldn’t find any more information from this subcommittee’s webpage about the most recent scorecard. However, I have no reason to believe that the SEC’s systems are not secure. In the hacker community, it has been a challenge to attempt to access the Edgar database for some time – just to prove it can be accomplished – and there have been no successes that I am aware of. Still, the thought of it can drive you mad – if someone accessed your recently filed 10-K and subtracted a few zeroes from net income…