TheCorporateCounsel.net

Recently, Morningstar announced that it’s “retiring” 10-K Wizard – and it looks like ThomsonReuters could be shutting down LivEdgar (aka “Business Law Research”) soon too. That would mean that the remaining Edgar-enhanced service providers would be Intelligize, Lexis Securities Mosaic, SEC Info, Wolters Kluwer’s RbSourceFilings, Bloomberg Law’s Edgar tool, RR Donnelley’s Edgar Pro and Westlaw’s Business Law Center.

There was a healthy discussion about pricing & alternatives in Topic #8586 of our “Q&A Forum” that is worth reading if you’re scrambling to figure out what to do now. Of course, the SEC’s site is free. And as one member posted in the Forum: “Why doesn’t the SEC invest a little in EDGAR and provide some basic form filtering for investors. Would be used much more than XBRL…”

Webcast: “How to Draft Meaningful Sustainability Reports”

Tune in tomorrow for the webcast – “How to Draft Meaningful Sustainability Reports” – to hear Lou Coppola of the Governance & Accountability Institute, Kate Kelly of Bristol-Myers Squibb and Pam Styles of Next Level Investor Relations explain the keys to drafting sustainability reports that are meaningful to investors & other constituents and a “how to” list of things you should be aware of when drafting.

Audit Committees: Disclosing More about Auditor Hiring & Compensation

As described in this blog, the Center for Audit Quality & Audit Analytics recently released this year’s report about audit committee disclosure practices among the S&P Composite 1500. Key findings include:

– 25% of S&P 500 companies show enhanced discussion of the audit committee’s considerations in recommending the appointment of the audit firm, up from 13% in 2014
– Percentage of the S&P 500 disclosing auditor tenure increased to 54% in 2015 from 47% in 2014
– 16% of S&P 500 companies explicitly stated the role audit committees play in determining the audit firm’s compensation, doubling from 8% in 2014
– Disclosure of the criteria considered when evaluating the audit firm tripled among the S&P 500 (from 8% to 24%), and more than tripled among S&P MidCap 400 companies – from 7% to 25%. Disclosure of this criteria among S&P SmallCap 600 companies increased from 15% to 22%
– Disclosure of the audit committee’s involvement in engagement partner selection more than doubled for the S&P 500 – from 13% in 2014 to 31% in 2015

Don’t forget to tune into our upcoming webcast: “Audit Committees in Action: The Latest Developments.”

Audit Report Reform: The UK Experience

This report highlights just how large the difference is between the transparency in audit reports in the UK and those issued in the US. Notwithstanding recommendations of a US Treasury Committee seven years ago to the PCAOB and SEC to improve audit reports, US audit reports are of substantially less quality then those discussed in the report. Nonetheless, the report does note several shortcomings in the UK reports. The EU will require extended audit reports for 2017 annual reports for calendar year companies…

– Broc Romanek