TheCorporateCounsel.net

April 8, 2019

10-K/10-Q/8-K “Cover Page” Changes: Courtesy of the Fast Act

A few weeks ago, the SEC adopted rules to implement the “Fast Act” – and when the rules go effective next month, they’ll make the following changes to the cover pages for Form 10-K, Form 10-Q and Form 8-K:

– Forms 8-K and 10-Q will require disclosure of the national exchange or principal US market for their securities, the trading symbol, and the title of each class of securities

– Form 10-K will have a new field for disclosure of the trading symbol for any securities listed on an exchange

– Form 10-K will no longer have a checkbox to show delinquent Section 16 filers

To reflect these changes, we’ve updated the Word version of the Form 10-K cover page in our “Form 10-K” Practice Area, as well as the Word version of the Form 10-Q cover page in our “Form 10-Q Practice” Area, and the Word version of the Form 8-K cover page in our “Form 8-K” Practice Area. Note that the adopting release contains the new cover page captions starting on page 216 – but doesn’t indicate exactly where the new text will be added to Form 8-K and Form 10-Q. So we’ve made an educated guess of where this new language will appear. The rules are effective May 2nd – but it typically takes the Staff a few weeks or months to incorporate these types of updates to the PDF cover pages published on the SEC’s website.

For companies that are required to submit Interactive Data Files in Inline XBRL format under Reg S-T, the Fast Act rules also require every data point on the cover pages to be presented with Inline XBRL tags. Some of the “Cover Page Interactive Data File” can be embedded – and the remainder should be attached as an exhibit under Reg S-K’s new Item 601(b)(104). The phase-in for this requirement matches the phase-in for mandatory Inline XBRL compliance. So for large accelerated filers, that means this will first be required in reports for periods ending on or after June 15th. Accelerated filers have until next year – and everyone else has until 2021. We’ve updated our “Form 10-K Cover Page Requirements Checklist” for all of the Fast Act rules – and will be updating all of our Handbooks as well.

BlackRock’s New Engagement Portal

Here’s a new engagement tidbit courtesy of Aon’s Karla Bos:

Unsurprisingly, BlackRock is now using a technology solution, provided by CorpAxe, to coordinate governance engagement requests. There was an announcement last year that BlackRock had selected CorpAxe as their “corporate access and research management solution,” but since it didn’t mention governance activities per se, it didn’t move onto my radar until BlackRock started redirecting companies that had reached out via email to request engagement. There is also a notice on their stewardship website that you should submit engagement requests through CorpAxe.

Podcast: “Legislation to Study Rule 10b5-1 Plans”

We blogged a few months ago about proposed legislation that flew through the House and would require the SEC to study – and potentially restrict – Rule 10b5-1 trading plans. In this 19-minute podcast, Scott McKinney of Hunton Andrews Kurth discusses the bill in more detail, as it awaits consideration by the Senate. Topics include:

– What is the status of the legislation?
– What are the concerns about Rule 10b5-1 plans the legislation is intended to address?
– What specific issues would the legislation require the SEC to consider?
– What should companies do now?

Liz Dunshee