The Proposed Regulation S-K and S-X Amendments

LawCast with Laura Anthony, Esq.

The Proposed Regulation S-K and S-X Amendments- At this point in the LawCast series I am summarizing the rule amendments proposed earlier on July 13, 2016, which rules are slated for action this year.

The proposed Regulation S-K and S-X Amendments cover:

• Duplicative requirements, including duplications between financial footnote requirements and disclosures in the body of a registration statement or report;
• Overlapping requirements which may not be completely duplicative. The S-K Amendments consider whether to delete certain disclosure requirements that are covered in GAAP or other financial reporting or integrate such disclosures into a single rule source;
• Outdated requirements which have become obsolete due to the passage of time or changes regulations, business or technology; and
• Superseded requirements which are inconsistent with recent legislation or updated rules and regulations.

The proposed Regulation S-K and S-X Amendments also seek to eliminate a laundry list of 26 redundant and duplicative disclosures. Most of these proposed changes are technical and nuanced related to particular Regulation S-X GAAP and other financial statement disclosures—for example, foreign currency; financial statement consolidation, income tax disclosures, contingencies and interim accounting adjustments. As the proposed rule eliminations are duplicative, they will not change the financial reporting or disclosure requirements.

Similar to redundant and duplicative disclosures, the SEC has identified numerous disclosure requirements that are related to, but not exactly the same as, GAAP, IFRS and other SEC disclosure obligations. The Regulation S-K and S-X Amendments propose to delete, scale back or integrate the overlapping disclosures to eliminate the overlap.
The SEC category of overlapping disclosures, and related Regulation S-K and S-X Amendments, have added broad considerations. For example, some of the proposed changes would result in the relocation of disclosures in the filings. This raises considerations related to the prominence of information in a particular report and moving information from outside to inside financial statements.

When information is in a different location in a report, it may receive more or less attention and be thought of as more or less prominent. Moreover, information inside of financial statements is subjected to audit and interim review, internal control over financial reporting and XBRL tagging. In addition, information inside of financial statements is not subject to the safe harbor protections of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 related to forward-looking statements.

A complete detail of all the proposed Regulation S-K and S-X Amendment changes related to overlapping disclosures is beyond the scope of this Lawcast; however, a few items deserve discussion.

In general, many of the changes proposed by the SEC relate to interim financial reporting. In some cases where items are fully required to be reported in a Form 8-K, annual report or management discussion and analysis (MD&A), the SEC proposes eliminating the same or similar requirement from interim financial statements.

For example, the SEC proposes eliminating significant business combination pro forma financial statement requirements from interim financial statements for smaller reporting companies and Regulation A filers. The pro forma financial statements are already sufficiently required by Item 9.01 of Form 8-K. Likewise, the SEC makes the same proposed elimination of financial reporting in interim reports for a significant business disposition or discontinued operation.

As another example, currently Regulation S-X requires disclosure of certain subsequent events in the footnotes to interim financial statements and Item 303 of Regulation S-K related to MD&A requires substantially the same disclosure. The SEC proposes to delete the Regulation S-X requirement and only require disclosure of these subsequent events in the MD&A. Likewise, the SEC proposes eliminating segment financial information from the footnotes and leaving it only in MD&A.

In other cases, the SEC supports elimination of a disclosure in the body of a document in favor of a financial statement disclosure. For example, the SEC proposes eliminating a discussion of warrants, rights and convertible instruments from the body of a Form 10 or S-1, noting that a complete disclosure including dilution is required in financial statements.