The Advisors' Blog

This blog features wisdom from respected compensation consultants and lawyers

July 10, 2018

Perk Disclosure: SEC’s Enforcement Blasts Company for Poor Drafting Training

Broc Romanek

You’ll be hearing a lot about the SEC’s Enforcement action against Dow Chemical over poor perk disclosures. As you can learn from the SEC’s order (and memos posted in our “Perks” Practice Area) – the company was not only fined $1.75 million – but it was ordered to retain a consultant for a period of one year to review its perks policies, controls & training (note that no individuals were charged, just the company). Wow! There were $3 million of perk omissions over four years.

So what can you do? For starters, we have an 82-page chapter on perk disclosure as part of the Lynn, Borges & Romanek’s “Executive Compensation Disclosure Treatise” posted on this site.

Then, we’ve had a panel about perk disclosures for 16 straight years as part of our annual “Proxy Disclosure” conference – which is coming up soon: September 25th & 26th in San Diego and also available by video webcast. This upcoming big disclosure conference has nearly 20 panels. Register by August 10th for a reduced rate.