Investors are keenly interested in understanding executive compensation programs, especially how these pay programs tie in with and support major elements of a company’s business strategy. Pre-set formulaic metrics, where employed, provide a clear window into the behaviors and performance that compensation committees are rewarding.

Now more than ever, sustainability and ESG topics are coming to the forefront across the globe from a diverse group of stakeholders including employees, customers, suppliers, communities, investors, and regulators. Driven in part by the Covid-19 pandemic, there is an increasing focus on employee health & safety, supply chain resilience, and corporate culture, along with growing concerns on climate risk to reputation, physical/operational, and the impact on corporate value creation.

SEC goes public with first significant changes to business-description disclosures in 30 years

On Monday, November 9, 2020, the SEC’s rule for modernizing Regulation S-K Items 101, 103, and 105 goes into effect. This rule is designed to modernize the description of business, legal proceedings, and risk factors in 10-Ks, 10-Qs, and registration statements.

Listen to Donnelley Financial Solutions (DFIN) and a panel of experts for an informative webcast, providing you insights to better understand the emerging importance of oversight of ESG.  Our panel included distinguished speakers from Harvard Management Company, Kirkland & Ellis, Warburg Pincus, Two Sigma, and McKinsey & Company.

Watch the full discussion here.

Ron Schneider, DFIN’s Director of Corporate Governance Services, discussed how early disclosures about the coronavirus pandemic fit with other proxy trends with talk show host TK Kerstetter on an episode of Inside America’s Boardrooms slated to air this week.

Over 500 IR professionals joined the first-ever, virtual awards ceremony to celebrate the success of those individuals leading the way in the investor relations profession. The much-anticipated list of winners was revealed. A select group of winners across 27 award categories were welcomed into the world-renowned hall of fame. 

DFIN was honored to collaborate with the following DFIN clients on their innovative investor communications.

IR Magazine Awards by Research

SPAC Transactions

The numbers alone speak volumes. As of mid-September 2020, 95 SPACs (special purpose acquisition companies) with a valuation of approximately $35 billion had priced year to date, shattering “all previous records,” said Craig Clay, President of Global Capital Markets for Donnelley Financial Solutions. In contrast, he said, for the full year of 2019, 59 SPACs had priced, and even this represented a sizeable increase over 46 in 2018 and 34 in 2017.

On the heels of Climate Week NYC, the largest climate summit of 2020, CFOs, controllers, and internal audit specialists are realizing just how critical the participation of the finance team can be in supporting sustainability and ESG reporting workflow. The topic has taken on greater urgency as more companies plan for the disclosure of climate-related financial risk in their SEC and stakeholders; communications using guidelines established by the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).

The market for SPACs, or special purpose acquisition companies, is “shattering all previous records,” according to Craig Clay, President of Global Capital Markets for Donnelley Financial Solutions. In a September 16^th webinar hosted by J. P. Morgan, Clay noted that as of mid-September, 95 SPACs with a valuation of approximately $35 billion had priced year to date. What’s more, 43 other SPACs are currently on file with the SEC, pending pricing. This stands in dramatic contrast to 2019, when just 59 SPACs were priced during the full 12-month period.

The Data Coalition’s two-day, virtual GovDATAx program, devoted to data policy and titled “An American Mission: Leveraging Data for the Public Good,” will be held on September 29th and 30th. The Data Coalition is widely considered the premier voice on data policy in the US; the group advocates for responsible policies to make sure government data is high quality, accessible and usable.