TheCorporateCounsel.net

June 24, 2010

The SEC’s Lone Blogger

A few months ago, the SEC hired Rick Bookstaber as Chief Policy Advisor to the Director of its new RiskFin Division. Interestingly, Rick has continued to maintain his own blog – albeit his entries are fairly infrequent. I imagine each of Rick’s posts has to be run through the SEC’s Ethics Office just like any other article written by a Staffer has to vetted there (when I served there, that vetting process took quite a while to complete – the process could be quite different nowadays).

Personally, I can’t believe the SEC is permitting a RiskFin guy to issue opinions on some of the topics that Rick covers, such as this opinion that that there is a gold bubble. When I was there, the only articles that a Staffer was permitted to write had to be factual with no color commentary. Maybe I’m “old school” here because I am indeed old…

Mailed: May-June Issue of The Corporate Executive

The May-June Issue of The Corporate Executive includes pieces on:

1. Reporting Performance Awards in the Proxy Statement
– Taxes When Performance Awards Vest During a Blackout Period
– Where We Have Been–Negative Numbers and Other Reporting Problems
– Where We are Now–A Clearer Picture
2. The Box: Planning for Taxes Due Upon Vesting of Performance Awards
– Methods Available for Covering Taxes
– Alternative #1: Short-Term Deferral
– Alternative #2: Longer Deferrals
– Alternative #3: Rule 10b5-1 Plans
– Alternative #4: Deduct FICA from Employee Paychecks
– What Doesn’t Work
– Planning Ahead is Key

Act Now: Get this issue rushed to you by trying a “Half Price for Rest of ’10” No-Risk Trial today.

Large Severance Payments & Short-Tenured CEOs

In this CompensationStandards.com podcast, Greg Ruel of The Corporate Library discusses his recent report regarding the largest severance payments given to short-tenured CEOs, including:

– Why did you decide to conduct the severance payment study?
– What were the study’s major findings?
– Did the findings surprise you? Did most of the companies with high severance payments to short-tenured CEOs have low ratings overall?

– Broc Romanek