On October 7, 2023, Governor Gavin Newsom of California signed into law two climate disclosure bills passed by the California Legislature. These laws now require that "by January 1, 2025 . . . businesses with total annual...more
Yesterday, September 26, 2023, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), along with six other Democratic Senators and eighteen Democratic Congressmen, sent a letter to SEC Chairman Gensler concerning the SEC's proposed climate...more
Earlier this month, Governor Newsom announced his support of a sweeping climate bill enacted by the California legislature that would compel major companies operating in California to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. ...more
On September 12, 2023, SEC Chairman Gensler testified before the Senate concerning a number of significant issues for the SEC. Among them was the SEC's still-pending rule on climate risk disclosures, which was first proposed...more
Last week, the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing entitled "Protecting Investor Interests: Examining Environmental and Social Policy in Financial Regulation." As indicated by the title of the hearing, the...more
This week, Congressmen Jim Jordan (R-OH), Thomas Massie (R-KY), and Dan Bishop (R-NC), sent a letter on behalf of the House Committee on the Judiciary to three major asset managers and two non-profit organizations (the...more
This week, the Securities & Exchange Commission indicated--through an update to a GSA website --that the proposed climate change disclosure rule would likely be finalized and released in October 2023. This date is congruent...more
About two weeks ago, former SEC Commissioner Robert Jackson, currently a professor at NYU Law, stated during an April 27 webinar hosted by a carbon accounting firm that "it looks like the [climate disclosure] rule is going to...more
SEC Commissioner Lizarraga, one of the recent Democratic appointees to the Securities & Exchange Commission, delivered a speech on April 18 at the annual public policy symposium of the North American Securities Administrators...more
Last week, SEC Chairman Gensler testified before the House Committee on Financial Services. As part of his talk, which addressed a number of topics--including, inter alia, artificial intelligence and crypto--Chairman Gensler...more
Today, President Biden issued the first veto of his presidency. This action had been heavily telegraphed in advance and was widely expected. Nonetheless, this veto is extraordinarily significant....more
Last month, the SEC issued its list of examination priorities for 2023. Among the list of six priorities identified by the SEC in its press release was "Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)." Specifically, the SEC...more
In a recent lecture delivered at Columbia Law School/Business School at the "Going Public in the 2020s" conference, SEC Commissioner Uyeda bemoaned "the general decline in the number of public companies over the past...more
Regulatory Developments -
During the past several weeks, there have been a couple of notable developments in connection with the SEC’s proposed climate disclosures rule, “The Enhancement and Standardization of...more
Last week, the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, Patrick McHenry (R-NC), "announced the formation of a Republican Working Group" composed of nine (9) Republican congressmen and "led by Oversight and...more
Three bills have recently been proposed by a trio of California state legislators concerning ESG financial disclosures and investing. The first, SB 253, would "require all large corporations that do business in California to...more
Recent developments in the Court of Chancery concerning a corporate board’s duty to monitor and provide oversight over a corporation’s operations, so-called Caremark claims, are likely to intersect with the Securities and...more
12/19/2022
/ Caremark claim ,
Climate Change ,
Corporate Governance ,
DE Supreme Court ,
Disclosure Requirements ,
Discovery ,
Duty to Monitor ,
Environmental Social & Governance (ESG) ,
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ,
Motion to Dismiss ,
Proposed Rules ,
Reporting Requirements ,
Risk Mitigation ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
SEC Enforcement: In its yearly summary of enforcement activity, the SEC chose to highlight ESG-related issues as one of only a handful of subject matter areas that the SEC is focused on, indicating the significant priority...more
12/14/2022
/ Climate Change ,
Department of Justice (DOJ) ,
Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Disclosure Requirements ,
Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) ,
Energy Sector ,
Enforcement ,
Environmental Social & Governance (ESG) ,
Federal Contractors ,
Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Sustainability
Last week, SEC Commissioner Peirce delivered a lengthy speech at the American Enterprise Institute, in which she extensively criticized the climate disclosure rules proposed by the SEC. Her critique deliberately extended...more
Public companies initiating the year-end reporting process will need to consider, and in many cases take steps to address, a number of significant developments and issues. To assist companies in this process, Mintz has...more
12/9/2022
/ Annual Meeting ,
Breach of Duty ,
Clawbacks ,
Climate Change ,
Corporate Governance ,
Cybersecurity ,
Data Protection ,
Disclosure Requirements ,
Diversity and Inclusion Standards (D&I) ,
Filing Deadlines ,
Insider Trading ,
Privacy Laws ,
Proxy Advisors ,
Publicly-Traded Companies ,
Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ,
Shareholders ,
Stock Markets ,
Supply Chain ,
Ukraine
Regulatory Developments. During the past month, there have been two notable developments in connection with the SEC’s proposed climate disclosures rule — “The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for...more
Last Thursday, the Biden Administration proposed that all federal contractors (except those receiving less than $7.5 million annually in contracts) be required to, among other things, disclose their GHG emissions....more
It has been publicly reported that the SEC is considering dropping “Scope 3” GHG emissions from the mandatory climate disclosures that were proposed last March. Such a development--a major change to the key policy initiative...more
Regulatory Developments Among State AGs. Over the past few weeks, various state attorneys general have either issued guidance or initiated enforcement actions in connection with ESG ratings. Specifically, among other things,...more
Last Friday, the SEC re-opened the comment period on its climate disclosures rule--"The Enhancement and Standardization of Climate-Related Disclosures for Investors"--for a period of "14 days following publication of the...more