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It is finally my turn to chime in the 2026 Proxy Disclosure & 23rd Annual Executive Compensation Conferences, which took place in Orlando earlier this month. You will be pleased to know that the video archives and transcripts for the Conferences are now available! If you registered for the conferences through our sites, you can access the video archives and transcripts via the access links on the 2026 Conference Archives page. Members of TheCorporateCounsel.net, CompensationStandards.com, Section16.com and DealLawyers.com who registered for the conferences can use their existing logins to access the Proxy Disclosure Archives and the Executive Compensation Archives.

If you are not a member, do not know your password, or are experiencing issues accessing the 2026 Conference archives, please reach out to our Member Services team by calling 800-737-1271 or send an email to info@ccrcorp.com.

We covered a lot of ground at the Conferences. I would like to thank Christina Thomas from the SEC for giving us so much insight into the SEC’s agenda, and to all of the SEC All Stars who provided great insights across two days of conferences. Thanks as well go out to the great team at CCRcorp, as well as all of our sponsors, speakers, and attendees! We could not have done it without you.

What were some of my key takeaways from the 2026 Proxy Disclosure & 23rd Annual Executive Compensation Conferences, you may ask? Here are the top five:

1. The SEC’s reform proposals (if adopted) will require some thoughtful analysis. I will often trot out the old proverb “you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink,” and I think it is well-suited for the SEC’s package of reform proposals. Time and time again throughout the Conferences, our speakers noted a number of considerations that companies will need to focus on before implementing the SEC’s reforms if they are adopted as proposed. This notion particularly applies in the context of the SEC’s semiannual reporting proposal, where there is skepticism that public companies will rush headlong into the optional semiannual reporting scheme, recognizing that it will be necessary to carefully consider investor reactions, financing needs, peer practices, insider trading considerations and other factors before changing the interval for periodic reporting. Similarly, if the SEC adopts the filer status reforms as proposed, companies will need to evaluate whether it makes sense to avail themselves of all of the exemptions and accommodations that would then be available to non-accelerated filers.

2. Rescission of Rule 14a-8 could complicate things for public companies. In the “be careful watch you wish for” category, the SEC’s proposal to rescind Rule 14a-8 generated a great deal of discussion among the speakers at our Conferences, and they described a post-Rule 14a-8 landscape that could be much more complicated for public companies. Our speakers noted that shareholders will likely shift to other avenues for advancing their proposals, which could lead to more contested situations and less predictability as to outcomes. The possibility of state law changes and private ordering could result in a lack of uniformity as to how shareholder proposals are addressed in company proxy statements (if at all), making things more complicated for companies and shareholders alike.

3. Prediction markets have grabbed our attention. The explosion in popularity of prediction markets has brought about concerns as to how company employees can use confidential information to their trading advantage, and insider trading policies and codes of conduct are being updated to address these concerns.

4. Everyone is waiting for the SEC’s executive compensation disclosure reforms. I kicked off our SEC All-Stars panel at the 23rd Annual Executive Compensation Conference with a trip down memory lane, describing my odyssey with executive compensation disclosure and highlighting some of the areas where the rules just don’t work today. Christina Thomas indicated that they Commission is considering major changes to the rules, now just some trimming around the edges. While we were hopeful that we would have a concrete rule proposal to discuss at the Conferences, it appears that perhaps election year politics may have gotten in the way. In any event, everyone is anxiously awaiting the arrival of the SEC’s reform proposal, which will likely be out “soon.”

5. The shareholder engagement landscape has really changed. Over the course of this year, I have been writing a lot about the significant shift in the shareholder engagement landscape, and our speakers did a great job exploring these changes and what it means for public companies. From the chilling effect of the SEC’s early 2025 beneficial ownership reporting guidance to artificial intelligence to standing voting instruction programs, there was a great deal to cover on this front, and companies should be very aware of these significant changes going into the 2027 proxy season.

It was great to see everyone who attended the Conferences in person this year, and I look forward to doing it all over again next year in New Orleans on September 21 & 22, 2027. I hope you get a chance to check out the video archives and transcripts of this year’s Conferences, and be sure to look out for my more detailed coverage in the November-December 2026 issue of The Corporate Executive.

– Dave Lynn