It is well known that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on business operations has directly affected executive compensation decision-making and related disclosures. With this backdrop, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has provided timely new guidance on the disclosure of named executive officers’ perquisites and other personal benefits.

Since the 1960s, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has had various so-called “Guides” for business disclosure by SEC registrants engaged in banking, oil and gas, real estate, insurance and mining activities. Guide 3, applicable to bank holding companies and other registrants with material lending and deposit activities (including savings and loan holding companies) has required various tabular and qualitative disclosures on these entities’ assets, liabilities and stockholders’ equity, interest rates and interest rate differentials, investment portfolios, loan portfolios, summaries of loan loss experience, deposits, return on equity and assets and short-term borrowings. The requirements have changed little since the 1960s, even though U.S. GAAP and IFRS, the two principal accounting standards used by SEC registrants, have changed significantly.

Among its many impacts on society, COVID-19 has changed, perhaps permanently, how employees interact with each other and the workplace.

Partners George Casey, Heiko Schiwek (both New York-Mergers & Acquisitions) and Jay M. Singer (Washington, D.C.-Tax) led a two-part discussion concerning the legal, business and tax considerations for navigating and structuring spin-offs.

Shearman & Sterling’s Real Estate group produced a webinar on the strategies that can be employed by bank lenders to comply with the National Flood Insurance Program regulations.

The CFTC has adopted a final rule to prohibit the controversial practice of post-trade name give-up for swaps that are executed anonymously through a Swap Execution Facility (SEF) and are intended to be cleared. Although the CFTC rejected requests for various exceptions to the prohibition, it did include an exception for package transactions which include a component transaction that is not a swap intended to be cleared.

Partner Chris Forrester led a recent webinar discussion with City Light Capital partners Josh Cohen and Tom Groos. They discussed the increasing number of family offices that are exploring ways to invest for impact across asset classes.

Counsel Mehran Massih and Jason Pratt co-authored an article for Wall Street Lawyer titled “EU Taxonomy Regulation Comes into Force.” 

Shearman & Sterling hosted a series of live webinars, focusing on Africa, where our multidisciplinary team of lawyers explored the future challenges, opportunities and risks facing those doing business across the African continent.

For over a century, U.K. company law has enabled a company to propose, to its creditors or shareholders, a compromise or arrangement of their rights which, if approved by the requisite majority and then by the court, is binding on all of the relevant creditors or shareholders. This process—a scheme of arrangement under Part 26 of the Companies Act 2006—has been frequently used by companies (including those non-U.K. companies that fall within the winding up jurisdiction of the English courts, to whom the court’s scheme jurisdiction extends) to implement a wide variety of different forms of financial restructuring, despite it not being a formal insolvency proceeding. In June 2020, the U.K. Government introduced a new form of restructuring plan under a new Part 26A of the Companies Act 2006, that would be focused on the needs of companies facing financial difficulties. In this briefing, we examine how the new restructuring plan differs from a scheme of arrangement and how it is likely to be used going forward.