Shareholder proposal rule
You might recall that, in 2023, the National Center for Public Policy Research submitted a shareholder proposal to The Kroger Co., which operates supermarkets, regarding the omission of consideration of “viewpoint” and...more
Last week, Cooley’s Reid Hooper attended the annual meeting of shareholder proposal stakeholders that Corp Fin hosts. Here are a few facts to help you glean some information about these meetings from Reid, who has been an...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 Wednesday, SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda spoke to the Society for Corporate Governance 2023 National Conference on the topic of shareholder proposals under rule 14a-8, a topic on which, historically, the commissioners’...more
In remarks earlier this month to the Council of Institutional Investors, Corp Fin director Renee Jones discussed Corp Fin’s reevaluation of the no-action process for shareholder proposals under Rule 14a-8. In particular, she...more
Back in March 2020, before we could even imagine that we would still be struggling with COVID-19 in 2022, the SEC announced Corp Fin staff guidance regarding annual meetings. Because of limitations on the ability to hold...more
At the end of last week, the Corp Fin staff made an announcement advising companies and shareholder proponents, effective immediately, to redact all personally identifiable and other sensitive information from Rule 14a-8...more
Yesterday, Corp Fin issued Staff Legal Bulletin 14L, which outlines Corp Fin’s most recent interpretations of Rule 14a-8(i)(7), the ordinary business exception, and Rule 14a-8(i)(5), the economic relevance exception. The new...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
Just in time for proxy season, the Corp Fin staff has issued a new Staff Legal Bulletin 14K on—what else—shareholder proposals and the “ordinary business” exclusion. The SLB attempts, once again, to provide some...more
You may recall that, earlier this month, Corp Fin announced that it had revisited its approach to responding to no-action requests to exclude shareholder proposals. In essence, under the new policy, the staff may respond to...more
On September 6, 2019, the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance announced two notable revisions to its approach to handling no-action requests by companies seeking to exclude shareholder proposals under Rule 14a-8....more
As foreshadowed by Corp Fin Director Bill Hinman at an event in July put on by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Corp Fin has announced that it is revisiting its approach to responding to no-action requests to exclude shareholder...more
The issue of mandatory arbitration bylaws is a hot potato—and a partisan one at that (with Rs tending to favor and Ds tending to oppose). And in this no-action letter issued yesterday to Johnson & Johnson—granting relief to...more
On October 23, 2018, the Division of Corporation Finance (the “Division”) of the Securities and Exchange Commission issued Staff Legal Bulletin No. 14J (“SLB No. 14J”), which provides the Division’s latest views on the scope...more
Corp Fin has just released a new staff legal bulletin on shareholder proposals—we’re up to 14J—that once again examines the exclusions under Rules 14a-8(i)(5), the “economic relevance” exception, and 14a-8(i)(7), the...more
You might recall that, in November last year, Corp Fin issued new Staff Legal Bulletin No. 14I, Shareholder Proposals, which, among other things, addressed the “economic relevance” exclusion of Rule 14a-8(i)(5). That rule...more
On a webcast today, “Shareholder Proposals: Corp Fin Speaks,” presented by TheCorporateCounsel.net, Matt McNair, Senior Special Counsel in Corp Fin’s Office of Chief Counsel, provided some “soft” guidance regarding the...more
Just in time for the beginning of proxy and shareholder proposal season, Corp Fin has posted Staff Legal Bulletin No. 14I, Shareholder Proposals. ...more
It ain’t over till it’s over, as they say. You may have thought that, after the series of staff no-action positions allowing exclusion of so-called “fix-it” proposals during the last proxy season, we had seen the last of...more
Corp Fin has refined its position with regard to exclusion of proposals to amend existing proxy access bylaws. However, the basis for the staff’s determination to grant or refuse no-action relief in that context remains a...more
Corp Fin has refined its position with regard to exclusion of proposals to amend existing proxy access bylaws. As you may recall, the line drawn so far by Corp Fin has been that, where the shareholder proposal related to...more