SEC Delivers On Promise Of Reforms

After a year of agendas, concept releases, and guidance updates, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has recently begun to unleash a torrent of proposed rulemaking aimed at encouraging companies to go—and stay—public. To date, however, most of these proposals have focused on US domestic reporting companies, with any comparable changes for foreign private issuers (including Canadian issuers reporting under the multijurisdictional disclosure system (MJDS)) to be determined.

Semi-annual reporting

On May 5, the SEC proposed to eliminate the requirement of US domestic issuers to file quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, thereby permitting the filing of a single semi-annual report on Form 10-S for the first six months of each fiscal year. This proposal, however, does not apply to foreign private issuers (FPIs)—including Canadian issuers reporting under the MJDS—as the SEC does not require quarterly reports for FPIs, instead only requiring FPIs to furnish on Form 6-K any interim