The Advisors' Blog

In her “Deep Quarry” Substack newsletter, Olga Usvyatsky has been reporting her observations on Dodd-Frank clawback disclosures. Her latest newsletter reports these data points on disclosures for the first half of 2026:

– The number of companies with an error correction flag declined to 142 in the first half of 2026, compared with 169 in the first half of 2025 (down 16% year over year) and 206 in the first half of 2024 (down 31% over two years).

– The number of companies indicating that they performed a recovery analysis declined to 57 in the first half of 2026, compared with 70 in the first half of 2025 (down 19% year over year), but remained substantially above the 29 reported in the first half of 2024 (up 97%).

– The number of companies providing recovery analysis disclosures declined sharply to 25 in the first half of 2026, down from 48 in the first half of 2025 (down 48% year over year), but remained above the 18 reported in the first half of 2024 (up 39%).

– Clawbacks remained rare, with 4 companies disclosing compensation recoupment during the first half of 2026, compared with 6 in the first half of 2025 (down 33%) and 2 in the first half of 2024 (up 100%).

– At the same time, several companies reported that their clawback analysis remained in progress. Four companies disclosed that their recovery analysis had not been completed by the filing date, compared with 2 in the first half of 2025 (up 100%) and none in the first half of 2024.

She notes that the 2026 decline is primarily attributed to the first quarter, since the second-quarter activity was mostly comparable year over year, and that the 2024 restatement levels were probably influenced by Borgers-related re-audits. I’m surprised at the second bullet point since the situations where the first box would be checked but not the second are fairly limited, but maybe voluntary restatements are more common than I realized. See this Cooley “Guide to the 10-K Clawback Checkboxes” posted in our “Clawbacks” Practice Area.

– Meredith Ervine