Shareholder proposal rule
On February 12, 2025, the Division of Corporation Finance (Staff) of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published Staff Legal Bulletin No. 14M (SLB 14M), rescinding Staff Legal Bulletin No. 14L (Nov. 3, 2021)...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
Following a tumultuous 2022 shareholder proposal no-action letter season, the 2023 season contained fewer surprises from the Staff of the Division of Corporation Finance (Staff) of the Securities and Exchange Commission...more
Companies are responding in a myriad of ways to the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (Dobbs), including by expanding healthcare travel benefits to reduce barriers to accessing care in...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
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
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
Ordinarily, companies can exclude shareholder proposals that deal with the ordinary course of business. Our Securities Group analyzes new Securities and Exchange Commission guidance that expounds on what “ordinary” and...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
Earlier this month, the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance announced that its staff may respond orally instead of in writing to some shareholder proposal no-action requests, beginning with the 2019-2020 proxy season. ...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 SEC published this statement announcing a new position on requests for no action letters to exclude shareholder proposals: After the recent proxy and shareholder proposal season, the Division considered whether...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
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 the heels of the release of SLB 14J, Corp Fin has posted a couple of new no-action letters that shed some more light on the “ordinary business” exclusion of Rule 14a-8(i)(7). As you may recall, in SLB 14J, the staff...more
On October 23, the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance issued Staff Legal Bulletin No. 14J (CF) (SLB 14J) to provide new guidance on the application of the “ordinary business” and “economic relevance” exceptions to a public...more
Recent, seemingly disparate action by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) with respect to two shareholder proposals may leave companies and shareholders confused as to whether companies may exclude shareholder...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
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission staff’s release of Staff Legal Bulletin No. 14I ahead of the upcoming proxy season appears to reflect several issuer-friendly modifications to the staff’s processing of no-action...more
What’s the latest on proxy access proposals? As you may recall, the line drawn so far by Corp Fin has been that, where the shareholder proposal related to initial adoption of proxy access, Corp Fin has continued to grant...more