March 29, 2012
Stock Act: For $9 Million, Congress to Have Own Trading Database Open to the Public
As the sleepers of the STOCK Act continue to get visibility in the memos posted in our “Insider Trading” Practice Area (and this blog), hat tip to Bridgeway Software’s Blane Erwin for pointing out this excerpt from the Act (on pages 12 and 13):
Not later than 18 months after the date of enactment, the Secretary of the Senate and the Sergeant of Arms of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Representatives shall develop systems to enable (A) electronic filing of reports… (B) public access to financial disclosure reports… (ii) allow the public to search, sort and download data contained in the reports.
As noted in this Washington Examiner article, the new software and hardware will be developed at a cool cost of $9 million ($3.2k per Congressman per year per this article). Wonder if the new system will be like the SEC’s Edgar? Take part in the anonymous poll below…
Latest Developments in Use of Supplemental Proxy Materials
In this CompensationStandards.com podcast, Jim Kroll of Towers Watson discusses the latest developments in using supplemental proxy materials for say-on-pay votes (here’s our ongoing list of supplemental materials), including:
– How many companies have filed them so far this year?
– Is the approach that companies are taking any different than last year?
– What are the pros and cons of using supplemental materials?
Poll: What Should the Name of the New Congressional Trading Database Be?
Did you know that the SEC had an internal contest to name its filing database back in the ’80s? Then Corp Fin’er Herb Scholl won that contest with his “EDGAR” entry. Now it’s your turn. Note that the suggestion of “Crotch” below is an acronym for “Congressional Recordkeeping of Trades, Changes & Hooch”:
– Broc Romanek