The Securities Law Blog provides commentary and news on the latest securities law developments impacting established and emerging growth publicly-traded issuers and investment banks, as well as entrepreneurs and venture-backed private entities. Our blog closely follows SEC rulemaking in several key areas including public and private securities offerings, shareholder activism and equity investment, and mergers & acquisitions.
The authors of this blog are members of the Corporate/Securities practice of Olshan Frome Wolosky LLP. Since our founding, this firm has been distinguished by responsive, independent and client-focused legal services provided by lawyers with a profound commitment to the companies they serve. This blog is an outgrowth of this representation of our clients in a wide range of capital market transactions.
As shareholder activists fine-tune their communications strategies for the upcoming proxy season, we expect that many will view social media as an increasingly important means of getting their message out to shareholders. Although a number of prominent investors have used certain forms of social media for years (e.g., Carl Icahn’s use of Twitter), we have only recently seen investors begin to engage with multiple social media platforms as part of a comprehensive digital and social media strategy for their campaigns. Noted examples include Elliott Management’s successful campaign at Arconic and
Pershing Square’s ongoing election contest at Automatic Data Processing.
This blog post lays out the important legal issues and other information that investors should consider when evaluating whether and how to use social media in their upcoming campaigns.
The SEC’s FAST Act Modernization and Simplification of Regulation S-K release would leave the decision about omission of proprietary information in an SEC filing to the registrant, without filing a confidential treatment request. This accommodation is not without potential issues.
First open meeting under Chair Clayton includes unanimous approval of proposed revisions to SEC disclosure rules and forms
In an exceptionally thoughtful column using the recent Social Capital Hedosophia SPAC IPO as his test case, author James Mackintosh suggests it's time to fix IPOs with smarter lock-ups, an auction process variant for price setting and more say by issuers over who gets stock.