SEC Chairman Gary Gensler announced he is directing staff to consider whether to recommend further regulatory action regarding proxy voting advice, leading the agency to pause related enforcement activity.
In remarks yesterday before the ESG Board Forum,
Putting the Electric Cart before the Horse: Addressing Inevitable Costs of a New ESG Disclosure Regime, SEC Commissioner Elad Roisman weighed in with his views on mandatory prescriptive ESG requirements and the likely associated costs. As he has indicated before, he’s not really keen on the idea, particularly the environmental and social components of potential requirements. As a general matter, while investors want to see comparable standardized environmental data, in his view, standardization of that type of information is really hard to do; some of it “is inherently imprecise, relies on underlying assumptions that continually evolve, and can be reasonably calculated in different ways. And ultimately, unless this information can
Thursday, May 13, 2021
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC or the Commission) has announced a series of initiatives reorienting the Commission’s agenda to focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. In particular, the Commission is gearing up to develop a framework to address ESG disclosures, including climate change risk and diversity and inclusion metrics. According to Chairman Gary Gensler, an ESG disclosure rulemaking is a “top priority.” Accordingly, we expect the Commission could issue a proposed rulemaking regarding such disclosures later this year.
A CLIMATE AND ESG DISCLOSURE FRAMEWORK
On 15 March 2021, then-Acting Chair (now Commissioner) Allison Herren Lee delivered a speech discussing plans to establish an “ESG reporting framework that would complement our financial reporting framework” (ESG Speech).
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The SEC has restored the authority of senior Division of Enforcement officials to initiate investigations without requiring approval by the SEC. This authority was originally established in 2009, but later revoked in 2017. On February 9, then-acting SEC Chair Allison Herren Lee reestablished senior enforcement staff’s ability to issue subpoenas and take sworn testimony sua sponte. This approach will likely decentralize and accelerate the approval process for investigations and enhance the Enforcement Division’s investigative autonomy.
Days later, the SEC also reversed course as to its procedure for waiving automatic disqualifications that the federal securities laws and regulations impose on so-called bad actors. On February 11, Lee announced that a settling party may no longer request joint consideration of enforcement action settlement offers with waiver requests. This reinstitutes a bifurcated process to consider
SEC s Peirce Talks ESG And Agency s Future Under New Chair
Thank You! Law360 (April 30, 2021, 5:09 PM EDT) Recent initiatives from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission could bring wholesale changes to the way the agency polices environmental, social and governance disclosure issues, but the existing framework doesn t need any fixing if you ask Commissioner Hester Peirce.
Hester Peirce
In part one of this two-part interview series, Peirce told Law360 that the SEC s existing principles-based framework already provides an objective test to make sure firms are disclosing material risks, warning that recent calls for
a more prescriptive approach could prove to be an exercise in regulatory overreach.