Compliance Today (June 2020)

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) made slight regulatory changes^[1] that could ease the burden for publicly traded companies. The changes deal primarily with disclosures, deadlines, and certain time-consuming requirements that are changed or suspended until midsummer 2020.

Some extensions regard disclosures of bottom-line data^[2] that help investors do their job. Without these data, the full extent of the economic damage done by the pandemic in February and March will be unclear, as will numbers heading into the summer. Other extensions and loosening of regulations affect disclosure concern forms and systems, such as the EDGAR system, that will not affect investor or shareholder sentiment but should expedite matters during the pandemic.

1 U.S. Securities and Exchanges Commission, “SEC Provides Additional Temporary Regulatory Relief and Assistance to Market Participants Affected by COVID-19,” news release, March 26, 2020, https://bit.ly/39wsMA9.
2 Paul Kiernan, Mark Maurer, and Dave Michaels, “SEC Gives Extra Time to File Reports as Firms Assess Coronavirus Impact,” The Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2020, https://on.wsj.com/2UvZVHJ.

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