Monday, March 8, 2021
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) matters will increasingly be a priority for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as evidenced by:
the SEC s announcements last week of the formation of a Climate and ESG task force under the purview of the SEC s Division of Enforcement;
the identification of ESG issues as a 2021 examination priority by the SEC s Division of Examinations on March 3; and
the March 2 Senate confirmation hearing testimony of Gary Gensler, President Joe Biden s nominee to lead the SEC, where Mr. Gensler said that investors increasingly want to see climate risk disclosures.
This follows last month s instruction by Acting SEC Chair Allison Herren Lee that staff of the SEC s Division of Corporation Finance (CorpFin) should augment their focus on climate-related disclosure in public company filings.
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On February 11, 2021, the Acting Chair of the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission ( SEC or Commission ), Allison Herren Lee, announced that the
Division of Enforcement will no longer recommend to the Commission
settlement offers conditioned upon waivers of certain automatic
disqualifications that arise following violations of federal
securities laws.
1 The announcement marks a return to the
Commission s long-standing, prior practice of segregating the
waiver application process from settlement negotiations. This
practice was briefly abandoned beginning in July 2019 when then-SEC
Chairman Jay Clayton announced that settling parties may submit
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