I’m pretty excited to announce our latest blog on CompensationStandards.com: “The Consultants Blog.” This blog will feature wisdom from respected compensation consultants.

So far, these consultants have agreed to kick off the vibrant conversation on the issues, developments and trends faced by those seeking to implement responsible compensation practices: Don Delves, Mike Kesner and Fred Whittlesey. In the coming weeks, I expect to add more consultant bloggers willing to share their thoughts. Check out the blog and input your email address on it so that you can get an email whenever an entry is posted…

Evelyn Y. Davis: Catch Her in Action

Perfect timing for today’s webcast about conducting annual meetings, here is a CNBC interview with Evelyn Davis. CNBC should make her a regular commentator; I doubt it would impact the quality of their reporting. Thanks to ProxyMatters.com for digging this gem out…

SEC’s New – and Free – Edgar Feeds

Recently, the SEC has added news feeds for every issuer and reporting person who files on Edgar. You can now track what is being filed without having to use a paid subscription service. Note that the SEC has not yet touted this new feature via a press release or its various guides about how to search filings.

On his “IR Web Report,” Dominic Jones explains the potential ramifications of this development on Business Wire, PR Newswire, Edgar Online, etc. My guess is that their businesses won’t be too damaged – yet – since the Edgar feeds include only generic filing headings, dates and internal tracking numbers, which is less useful than providing a summary or the full text of each filing. Dominic also explains how this allows companies to ensure widespread syndication of their news to the masses simply by filing their news releases on Edgar.

By the way, Dominic had a beauty of an April Fool’s joke posted on his site yesterday…

– Broc Romanek

Now that we have the 212-page Blueprint Paulson Report, we all can start drilling down into what it means. More analysis will follow over the next few weeks; today, I want to focus on a narrow aspect of the report’s long-term recommendation: the demise of the US Securities & Exchange Commission.

This is not an April Fool’s joke. The Paulson Plan recommends an overhaul of the regulatory framework for the markets, which includes moving the responsibilities that the SEC currently has into other agencies. The Corp Fin and other accounting responsibilities that the SEC presently has would be rolled over to a new “Business Conduct Regulator.”

Yesterday, I already whined about excessive change, so no need to drag you through that mud again. I’m just nostalgic about the prospect of the term “SEC” being a fading footnote in history, given that my career continues to revolve around the place and I have fond memories of working there. Interestingly enough, quite a few securities regulators in other countries have used some derivation of the name – or even the identical name – for themselves (eg. Bandgadesh’s regulator has the same name). Here is a partial list of securities regulators from around the world.

Speaking of April Fools: The NASPP has posted an alert highlighting a new study regarding option exercise behavior. The study unearthed some very interesting and surprising trends in how employees exercise options.

Conduct of the Annual Meeting

Tune in tomorrow for the webcast – “Conduct of the Annual Meeting” – during which a panel of experts will give practical guidance about all the issues that may arise during your upcoming annual meeting. This is a reprise of a similar webcast that we did four years ago that still remains one of my all-time favorites. This promises to be a gem as the speakers will spend some time on the nitty gritty of how the voting process works, demystifying the chain of voting through intermediaries, etc.

Corp Fin’s “Sample Letter” on Fair Value Measurements

Last week, Corp Fin posted this sample letter to remind companies of their MD&A obligations when applying SFAS 157 – regarding fair value measurements – for their upcoming Form 10-Qs. The letter was sent to companies that “reported a significant amount of asset-backed securities, loans carried at fair value or the lower of cost or market, and derivative assets and liabilities” in the financial statements in their recent Form 10-Ks.

– Broc Romanek