Shareholder proposal rule
Class Action Trends – Interview with Stephen Gulotta, Managing Member, Mintz Levin's New York Office
Join Bass, Berry & Sims and leading environmental, social, and governance (ESG) along with corporate and securities thought leaders for the next installment of our ESG Impact Webinar series. As public companies prepare for...more
Public companies can breathe a sigh of relief, at least for now, that the Securities and Exchange Commission's 14a-8 regulatory process for excluding shareholder proposals remains intact....more
Corp Fin has announced a new intake system for requests from companies for no-action positions from the staff regarding companies’ intentions to exclude shareholder proposals under Rule 14a-8. In the announcement, Corp Fin...more
On July 13, 2022, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), by a 3-2 vote, proposed amendments to the proxy rules that would narrow certain grounds under which companies may exclude shareholder proposals from their...more
The Situation: Late last year, a shareholder sued NorthWestern Corporation ("NWE") to compel the company to include a climate-change related proposal in its 2020 proxy materials after NWE had notified the staff of the...more
On November 21, 2019, the Division of Corporation Finance (Corp Fin) of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) provided additional detail regarding how it would process responses to Rule 14a-8 no-action requests to...more
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has issued several important recent updates regarding shareholder proposals and the related no-action request process for companies to consider ahead of the 2019-2020 proxy...more
On September 6, 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance (the “Division”) announced changes to how the Division provides responses under the Rule 14a-8 no-action request process. As...more
Changes May Create New Challenges for Public Companies, and Signal a Reduction of the SEC Staff’s Traditional Role As Arbiter Between Companies and Shareholders - On September 6, 2019, the SEC's Division of Corporation...more
The Background: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("the SEC") has announced that it may no longer review no-action letter requests relating to shareholder proposals submitted to companies under Rule 14a-8. The SEC...more
On June 5, 2019, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) declined to issue a no-action letter to CorVel Corporation with respect to CorVel’s intention to exclude from its proxy materials a shareholder proposal regarding...more
On November 1, 2017, the Division of Corporation Finance of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released Staff Legal Bulletin No. 14I (SLB 14I), which provides important guidance to public companies reviewing...more
This Glossary is designed to provide law students taking Securities Regulation with a tool that will assist them in learning the basic language of securities law and achieve a working knowledge of the fundamental principles...more
As noted here, two issuers have omitted shareholder proposals from preliminary proxy statements where no-action letters from the SEC regarding omission of the proposals have been withdrawn. The blog suggests, within its...more
Earlier this month, the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee devoted part of its agenda to the topic of proxy access and the much debated Rule 14a-8(i)(9), which permits companies to exclude shareholder proposals from their...more
Readers may recall that last December Whole Foods Market, Inc. had secured the SEC staff’s concurrence in excluding a shareholder access proposal submitted by Jim McRitchie. Then, SEC Chair Mary Jo White directed the staff...more
On January 16, 2015, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that, for the 2015 proxy season, the Division of Corporation Finance will not express any views as to whether a company may exclude a shareholder...more
Much is being made of the January 16th statement by SEC Chair Mary Jo White regarding a company’s ability to exclude a shareholder proposal from its proxy statement based on Rule 14a-8(i)(9), which allows exclusion when a...more
Yesterday, Broc Romanek posted on SEC Chair Mary Jo White’s Friday surprise with respect the no-action letter request submitted by Whole Foods Market, Inc. Readers may recall that in December Whole Foods had obtained the...more
James McRitchie was the shareholder proponent who submitted a proxy access proposal to Whole Foods. The SEC granted Whole Foods’ request to exclude the proposal. Mr. McRitchie has now requested an appeal to the full...more
Last week, James McRitchie submitted an “appeal” of the staff’s grant of no-action advice to Whole Foods Market, Inc. As explained in a post by Broc Romanek, Whole Foods was able to obtain that staff’s concurrence in...more
This post yesterday by Broc Romanek alerted me to Judge Leonard P. Stark’s recent opinion in Trinity Wall Street v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 165431 (D. Del. Nov. 26, 2014). The case involved Wal-Mart’s...more