Earlier today, President Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act into law. The Act, at over 2,000 pages, will require sweeping changes to financial regulation in the coming months. The signing of the Act itself, is really just the first Act! During Act Two we will see many regulatory agencies issue required studies, enact new rules and provide guidelines in the coming months. While the Act clearly impacts the financial services industry - most companies will be impacted in some ways as well. For example, there are many corporate governance provisions- particularly as it relates to disclosure of executive compensation of public companies. Look for requirements to provide a chart comparing executive compensation trends to stock price trends, disclosure of the ratio of CEO pay to the median pay of ALL employees (while it may provide some interesting, and even provocative results, imagine how burdensome that requirement will be to companies with thousands of employees worldwide!), additional independence requirements for compensation committees and more! The SEC itself is required to provide well over 100 studies, rules and creation of new offices in the near term! Mary Schapiro, SEC Chair noted that the SEC would likely require approx. 800 new resources to be able to comply with the myriad of requirements that the commission will have under the new legislation! We have prepared a summary of the major provisions (by no means comprehensive!), and it can be accessed in the Financial Reporting Alerts section of our website.
http://www.resourcesglobal.com/index.php?page=03CS21&lang=USEN
