TheCorporateCounsel.net

December 30, 2019

SEC Approves Amendments to FINRA’s “Corporate Financing Rule”

Last week, the SEC issued this notice to approve changes to FINRA Rule 5110. This Mayer Brown blog gives a high-level overview of topics covered by the amendments – which are intended to reduce compliance costs:

(1) filing requirements; (2) filing requirements for shelf offerings; (3) exemptions from filing and substantive requirements; (4) underwriting compensation; (5) venture capital exceptions; (6) treatment of non-convertible or non-exchangeable debt securities and derivatives; (7) lock-up restrictions; (8) prohibited terms and arrangements; and (9) defined terms

Corporate Musicals: Ready for a Revival?

If you haven’t watched “Bathtubs Over Broadway” on Netflix, make it your New Year’s resolution. In this review for The New Yorker, Richard Brody concludes that high-budget corporate musicals like J&J’s “sunscreen disco” inspired countless “mid-level business people” to be heroes in their profession.

Is a revival of this genre the key to positive corporate culture that so many companies & shareholders say they want? For enough money, I’m pretty sure Kristin Chenoweth would sing about insurance policies, medical devices or self-driving vehicles. For some “short form” entertainment, check out Blackstone’s holiday video – 6 minutes and in the style of “The Office,” with a joke for us SEC geeks around the 4:30 mark.

Songs For Our Time

On second thought, maybe over-the-top, optimistic musicals aren’t a good fit for this day & age. What today’s workers would identify with is an album with songs like “The Perils of Mobile Connectivity” – from a derivatives trader who’s spent the best years of his life in an office tower. I’m here to report that Jason Pilling’s “White Collar Melodies” has all that & more…

Liz Dunshee