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Ignorance is No Excuse: The Importance of Reg FD Training

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You may remember that Martha Stewart spent time in prison.

She served five months behind bars and another five months of house confinement at her 153-acre estate in New York, wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet, for selling 4,000 shares of ImClone Systems before news of the FDA’s rejection of one of ImClone’s cancer drugs was made public.

ImClone’s former CEO, Samuel Waskal, a friend of Stewart’s who presumably gave her the stock tip, served a seven-year prison term after pleading guilty to orchestrating stock trades, as well as to other corporate misdeeds.

How much insider trading is going on in U.S. stock markets based on material, non-public information? At least four times more than regulators actually catch and prosecute, according to research from the University of Technology Sydney. 

Could Reg FD training have helped either of them avoid prison sentences? 

We’d certainly like to think so. For Waskal, of course, he definitely knew better as CEO of a publicly traded company. Stewart may have never heard of Reg FD, but she should have known better as well, based on plain old common sense.

Whether you’re working at a public company for the first time, or you’re a seasoned pro, being aware of Reg FD (Regulation Fair Disclosure) and how to avoid missteps is vitally important. Many companies provide periodic formal Reg FD refresher training even for public company veterans. Not only does such training help prevent employees from disclosure pitfalls, but it also serves as a record that your company takes disclosure seriously.

Starting with the basics, Reg FD became effective more than two decades ago to help the SEC prevent selective disclosure of material, non-public information, remedying the perception of unfairness in communications throughout the investment community. One of the key principles of Reg FD is that information must be broadly distributed, not selectively disseminated. A good rule of thumb is to provide full disclosure to all … all the time.

What constitutes materiality? If there is a substantial likelihood that an investor would consider the subject important in the total mix of information when making an investment decision, and if it is reasonable to expect that the information could have an effect – up or down – on a stock’s price, it’s probably material.

Things to consider include receipt of a big contract, M&A, a stock buy-back program, a director or officer resignation, among many others. Materiality can be somewhat subjective though, so it’s important to communicate with your attorneys if there is any doubt.

There are two simple rules to follow to ensure you’re not running afoul of the SEC (and that you don’t wind up like Martha Stewart):

  • Never buy stock in your company, or encourage others to do so, when you are in possession of material, non-public information.
  • If you ever have questions about whether, and when, you, as an insider, can buy or sell your company’s stock, contact your CEO, CFO or legal counsel.

Keep in mind that while there are remedies for inadvertently disclosing material, non-public information, you should strive never to have to use those remedies. But, just in case, here are the steps to take should someone slip:

  • Let an authorized company spokesperson know as soon as possible, so that that person can work to promptly determine the nature and materiality of the selective disclosure. (Authorized spokespersons are required to determine the cause of the selective disclosure and take appropriate steps to reduce or eliminate the risk of recurrence.)
  • Within 24 hours of the inadvertent disclosure, or at the next opening of market session, a company may issue a press release or file Form 8-K with the SEC containing the material information that was deemed to be selective disclosure.

If it happened to Martha Stewart, is can happen to anyone. “It was horrifying, and no one — no one — should have to go through that kind of indignity, really, except for murderers, and there are a few other categories,” Stewart told Katie Couric during a 2017 interview on the Today Show.

Aside from providing Reg FD training to pre-IPO and newly public companies, along with refresher sessions, PondelWilkinson has been approved by the California Bar Association to provide one-hour Reg FD training sessions to attorneys for CLE credits. While we have to know the ins and outs to be effective trainers, we’d love to hear about your Reg FD experiences.

Laurie Berman, lberman@pondel.com

Social Securities

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The Securities and Exchange Commission’s recent decision allowing public companies to announce information via social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter is a logical next step for a government agency that has been relatively non-committal about new information channels.

Most public companies think in terms of 10-Ks, 10-Qs, 8-Ks and the like when it comes to disclosure, in addition to issuing news releases on wire services, such as Business Wire, PRNewswire, GlobeNewswire and Marketwire. But times are-a-changin’, indeed. When an executive can speak directly to his or her audience on Facebook or Twitter, it seems superfluous to shell out thousands of dollars a year to issue news releases.

Tweeting a link to financial results is, in many ways, a lot easier (and certainly less expensive) than uploading an eight-page news release to a wire service. So what if tweeting financial results will not reach Yahoo! Finance, Google News and other websites that are fed by wire services. Consider how liberating it might feel to spoon feed your messages directly to audiences who care the most about your news.

Not so fast.

To think that social media are a perfectly benign and convenient way to disclose information is about as naïve as believing that Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong-un are BFF. Consider the fact that thousands upon thousands of fictitious identities are created on Facebook and Twitter on a weekly, if not daily basis. Now add to the mix that companies are issuing market-moving information on these very same networks, and soon the powder keg doubles, triples and quadruples in size.

Don’t get me wrong. I love social media and believe that a plurality of channels begets a more well-informed public. But the SEC doesn’t (likely) have the bandwidth to police the myriad shenanigans that social media have the ability to perpetuate.

And so my question is this: Is the SEC saying OK to social media to save face(book) on the fact that it did not initiate an enforcement action on Netflix CEO Reed Hastings? Or is it due time for the SEC to embrace social media for what they really are: new information channels that have the potential to breed a hornet’s nest of Reg FD infractions.

 

— Evan Pondel, epondel@pondel.com

The Downside of Social Media

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While social media usage continues to grow here in the U.S. and globally, so do opportunities to reach key audiences on the Web, creating an oversaturation of content, we know all too well.

World Wide Web (Photo Credit: wikipedia.com)

 
Countless efficiency studies have been released on managing content, mirrored by just as many reports on tapping key audiences in a cluttered marketplace.  For instance, standing up in a packed movie theater yelling “Fire!” will certainly grab attention, but it’s probably not the kind of exposure that is sustainable over the long term.
 
Facebook and Google’s ad strategy of creating more personalized content based on user preferences may be the future of marketing.  The fact remains, however, that people turn off when the proverbial information flow goes on overload.
 
Walking a delicate balance is the right strategy.  Consider the following five tips when engaging
online audiences:
 

  1. Whether corporate, investor or marketing-related, make your message relevant. Know your audience’s wants and needs and develop messaging that resonates on a deeper level.  For example, time-strapped CEOs may be more inclined to listen to a vendor that understands the pressures of a “bottom line.”
     
  2. Don’t try to speak to the entire world. While having a video or tweet go viral is rare, most times less is more.  Try having more personalized online conversations and work on building deeper relationships with audiences.
     
  3. Start off slow. Don’t bombard your audiences with too many messages at once. Keep it simple. Start a conversation and then slowly move into other topic areas with time.
     
  4. Add value. Make sure you provide your audience with something they can’t get elsewhere. This is paramount.
     
  5. Try the post office.  May sound corny, but a nice follow up letter using old fashioned snail mail with an actual signed signature goes a long way in today’s fast-paced, digitized world. Think about how many personalized letters you receive these days.
     
  6. And finally, remember the old adage of selling the sizzle, not the steak. Keep in mind that there are millions of conversation threads each day. Why should anyone join yours?

 

— George Medici, gmedici@pondel.com