SEC Adopts Final Disclosure Update And Simplification Amendments

In her statement at the SEC open meeting held in 2016 to vote on issuing the proposing release for the SEC's "Disclosure Update and Simplification," SEC Commissioner Kara Stein protested that the proposal was, as she euphemistically framed it, so "hyper-technical" that many potential commenters may not be able "to truly access and understand what is being proposed." Apparently, even in its final state, the release was so hyper-technical that none of SEC Commissioners could even bear to talk about it. Could that be why there was no open meeting to discuss adoption of the final rules? Just guessing, of course. What we saw instead was a Friday afternoon drop of this announcement and this 314-page release on the final rules. The SEC has also kindly provided this "demonstration version" of the rule amendments, essentially a blacklined version of the amendments. The final rules represent a component of the SEC's disclosure effectiveness project, as well as an effort to