The Delaware courts have issued several noteworthy decisions in recent weeks that should have an impact on practice and stockholder litigation. Below is a brief summary of these decisions, which involved the following issues:

  • The breach of a capitalization representation in a merger agreement and the resulting ability of the buyer to terminate the deal
  • The Tesla and Oracle litigations alleging, respectively, that Elon Musk and Larry Ellison were controllers and improperly caused those companies to acquire SolarCity and NetSuite
  • The “MFW” framework to cleanse controlling stockholder conflicts—and whether the Delaware Supreme Court will revisit that framework

Continue Reading Recent Developments in Delaware Case Law

In this blog post, we highlight five reminders that may be useful for issuers preparing and filing quarterly reports on Form 10-Q in the coming weeks.

1. Include Trading Arrangements Disclosure Under Item 408(a) of Regulation S-K. Domestic issuers (other than smaller reporting companies) are required to comply with the new disclosure requirements in Item 408(a) of Regulation S-K for fiscal quarters commencing on or after April 1, 2023.[1] For calendar-year issuers, compliance with the new disclosure requirements will be required in the upcoming second quarter Form 10-Q. See our previous post, Reminder: Tracking Rule 10b5-1 Plans and Disclosure Timing, for transition periods by fiscal year-end.Continue Reading Five Reminders for the Form 10-Q

In our Snapshot: Risk Factor Trends—Part 1 post, we reviewed the risk factor disclosures of 30 of the Lonergan Silicon Valley 150 (SV150) companies to see whether the length of the risk factor disclosure, both in terms of the number of pages of risk factors and the number of risk factors disclosed, had increased or decreased since the publication of the second edition of our Risk Factor Trends Report (2021 report).[1] Our review suggests that both the number of pages of risk factors and the number of risk factors disclosed are continuing to increase.Continue Reading Snapshot: Risk Factor Trends—Part 2

On June 13, 2023, SEC Chair Gary Gensler announced the release of the SEC’s Spring 2023 Regulatory Agenda (Regulatory Agenda), which outlines the SEC’s rulemaking priorities over the next 12 months. The Regulatory Agenda includes a total of 55 rules, with 18 rules at the proposed rulemaking stage and 37…

Continue Reading SEC Publishes Spring 2023 Regulatory Agenda

On June 9, 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published notices and orders granting accelerated approval of the amended clawback-related listing standards proposed by the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC (Nasdaq) earlier this week. The amended versions of the NYSE and Nasdaq listing standards were discussed in our previous post.Continue Reading SEC Approves NYSE and Nasdaq Clawback-Related Listing Standards

Propose Effective Date of October 2, 2023

[Note: This post has been updated to reflect Nasdaq’s filing of an Amendment No. 1 on June 6, 2023 (posted June 7) proposing to delay the effective date of its clawback-related listing standards until October 2, 2023, consistent with the NYSE’s Amendment No.

Continue Reading NYSE and Nasdaq File Amended Proposed Clawback-Related Listing Standards [Updated]

In 2020, we published our inaugural Risk Factor Trends Report, which summarized the risk factor disclosure practices of the Lonergan Silicon Valley 150 (SV150) prior to the amendments to Item 105, Risk factors, of Regulation S-K (Item 105).[1] In 2021, we published the second edition of our Risk Factor Trends Report (2021 report), which summarized the risk factor disclosure practices of the SV150 following the effective date of the amendments to Item 105.[2]Continue Reading Snapshot: Risk Factor Trends—Part 1

On May 25, 2023, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Corporation Finance (Corp Fin) issued three new Compliance and Disclosure Interpretations (CDIs) relating to Rule 10b5-1 and related disclosure requirements. The first two CDIs provide clarification on the transition timing for compliance with the new quarterly and annual…

Continue Reading Corp Fin Issues Three New CDIs on Rule 10b5-1 Amendments and Related Disclosure Requirements

Wilson Sonsini is proud to support the 28th Annual Stanford Directors’ College, which will take place from Monday, June 26, to Wednesday, June, 28, 2023, at Stanford Law School. This conference is the nation’s premier executive education program for directors and C-level executives of publicly traded firms. The program…

Continue Reading Event Alert: 28th Annual Stanford Directors’ College

We reviewed four quarters of press releases announcing upcoming earning release dates, as well as the subsequent earnings release Form 8-Ks, for 30 public companies in the Lonergan Silicon Valley 150[1] to determine how long in advance they were announcing their upcoming earnings release date, the timing of their…

Continue Reading Snapshot: Earnings Date Announcements and Earnings Release Form 8-K Practices