Last month, the 5th U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in the SEC’s favor in a lawsuit brought by the National Center for Public Policy Research (the “Center”). The Center had submitted a shareholder proposal to The Kroger Company seeking to address what the Center described as “blatant leftwing actions” and seeking a report on
Louis Rambo
Louis Rambo is a partner in the Corporate Department and a member of the Capital Markets Group. He focuses his practice on counseling public companies and their boards of directors on corporate governance, capital markets transactions, mergers and acquisitions, securities regulation, disclosure and shareholder activism. Drawing on his previous tenure with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the Division of Corporation Finance, Louis partners with clients on capital raising, including underwritten equity transactions, at-the-market offerings and high-yield and investment grade debt offerings, as well as on structuring M&A transactions, spin-offs, tender offers and going private transactions. He advises public companies on developing governance and disclosure matters, including director independence, compensation, insider trading issues, shareholder proposals and stockholder meetings, and advises on shareholder activism and takeover defense.
Louis also regularly advises hedge funds, private equity funds, family offices, private companies and other financial institutions on a wide range of transactional and securities regulatory compliance matters, including capital raising, PIPEs and secondary transactions, novel and complex beneficial ownership issues arising under the federal securities laws, derivative transactions, insider trading issues and policies and compliance programs.
Louis previously served as an attorney with the SEC in the Division of Corporation Finance. While at the SEC, Louis worked on a number of transactional and securities compliance matters.
SEC Continues Enforcement Program Targeting Late Beneficial Ownership Reports
Following its adoption almost one year ago of amended rules accelerating filing deadlines for Schedules 13G and 13D (and the imminent effectiveness of the new deadlines for 13Gs), the SEC has continued to bring enforcement cases focusing on the timing of initial filings, amendments, and transitions from Schedule 13G to 13D, as well as Section…
SEC “Greenwashing” Enforcement Case Against Public Company
Last week, the SEC publicly announced a settled enforcement case against Keurig Dr. Pepper. The case focused on the company’s disclosure in its annual reports on Form 10-K on whether its K-Cup pods could (or would) be recycled. The SEC action focused on allegedly incomplete disclosure: In testing the reliability of recycling K-Cup pods, the…
New filing deadlines for Schedule 13G effective September 30
The deadlines for filing and amending Schedule 13Gs are about to change, and regular 13G amendments will now be due on a quarterly basis instead of annually.
As we discussed in our alert last fall (available here), in October of 2023, the SEC adopted new rules governing beneficial ownership reporting, including accelerating the filing deadlines…
Supreme Court Curtails Agency Power By Overturning Chevron Deference
On June 28, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling overturning “Chevron deference,” a tool for interpreting ambiguous statutes administered by administrative agencies. The 40-year-old Chevron doctrine held that, where a court finds a statute to be silent or ambiguous on a particular matter, the court must defer to the relevant agency’s construction of the statute if that construction is “permissible.” The Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo now rejects any such deference to the agency and requires courts to apply their own construction of the silent or ambiguous law, even if the agency’s contrary view is reasonable and “permissible.”
Proskauer Hedge Fund Trading Guide – Chapter 2: Insider Trading: Focus on Subtle and Complex Issues
Proskauer’s Practical Guide to the Regulation of Hedge Fund Trading Activities offers a concise, easy-to-read overview of the trading issues and questions we commonly encounter when advising hedge funds and their managers. It is written not only for lawyers, but also for investment professionals, support staff and others interested in gaining a quick understanding of the recurring trading issues we tackle for clients, along with the solutions and analyses we have developed over our decades-long representation of hedge funds and their managers.
New T+1 Settlement Cycle Takes Effect May 28th
The SEC’s new rules imposing a T + 1 settlement cycle for most securities transactions take effect on May 28, 2024. The previous default settlement cycle had been T + 2. For firm commitment offerings priced after 4:30 p.m. eastern time, including IPOs, the settlement cycle will be reduced from T+4 to T+2. While the…
SEC Voluntarily Stays Corporate ESG Disclosure Rules Pending Litigation
Yesterday, the SEC voluntarily stayed its new ESG disclosure rules for public companies pending the outcome of several lawsuits that have been filed, which are now consolidated in the 8th Circuit US Court of Appeals. We blogged earlier about the emergence of several lawsuits filed in different federal circuits. What does this mean? We believe that it means that the SEC wanted to avoid the delay that could result from extensive briefing on a potential court injunction staying the effectiveness of the rules, and move immediately to the merits, in hopes of resolving the litigation a reasonable period before the first effective date for many companies to begin compliance for their 2025 fiscal years. If the SEC prevails and the matter is resolved on a speedy basis, then the SEC has a chance to move forward with the rules on its original schedule, but the odds of that seem 50-50 at best.
Proskauer Hedge Fund Trading Guide – Chapter 1: When Passive Investors Drift Into Activist Status
Proskauer’s Practical Guide to the Regulation of Hedge Fund Trading Activities offers a concise, easy-to-read overview of the trading issues and questions we commonly encounter when advising hedge funds and their managers. It is written not only for lawyers, but also for investment professionals, support staff and others interested in gaining a quick understanding of the recurring trading issues we tackle for clients, along with the solutions and analyses we have developed over our decades-long representation of hedge funds and their managers.
Primarily Non-Financial Corporate Reporting: Climate Change
Version 2.0 following publication of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) Climate-Related Disclosure Rules
A wave of new legislation and regulation in the U.S. and Europe has the potential to significantly impact the non-financial reporting obligations of U.S. companies. With the myriad of requirements overlaid with varying timelines, it can be challenging to understand…