TheCorporateCounsel.net

January 6, 2020

Our New “Secondary Offerings Handbook”

Spanking brand new. By popular demand, this comprehensive “Secondary Offerings Handbook” covers the entire terrain, from the basics to how to deal with selling shareholders. This one is a real gem – 23 pages of practical guidance – and its posted in our “Secondary Offerings” Practice Area.

Smaller Reporting Companies: Some Stats

Recently, the SEC’s “Office of the Small Business Advocate” – which covers emerging, privately-held companies up to small public companies – released its inaugural Annual Report. Stats for smaller reporting companies begin on page 24 – here’s the main takeaways:

– The pre-exit holding period for a company in a PE or VC portfolio is now 6-7 years – so companies are choosing to enter the public markets after maturing beyond the smaller reporting company thresholds

– Average proceeds for small company IPOs & other registered offerings were $47 million last year

– 61% of small exchange-traded companies have no research coverage

The SEC also recently announced that it had published the report of findings from its Annual Small Business Forum. See this blog for a summary of the recommendations & SEC responses.

Cybersecurity: COSO’s New Guidance

Here’s 32 pages of new guidance from COSO – in partnership with Deloitte – that’s intended to help boards, audit committees and executives comply with COSO’s ERM Framework to protect companies against cyber attacks. This “Accounting Today” article gives an overview of how these resources work together:

COSO’s ERM Framework was updated in 2017 to spotlight the importance of applying ERM throughout an organization, particularly in strategic planning. One of the main drivers behind the 2017 update was to address the need for organizations to improve their approach in managing cyber risks. The new guidance aims to provide context on the fundamental concepts of cyber risk management to help organizations leverage their existing technical cybersecurity frameworks.

Liz Dunshee