At The PCAOB, They Give No Words But “Mum”
In March, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board issued its first public research note. Entitled “Activity Summary and Audit Implications for Reverse Mergers Involving Companies from the China...
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Is Big Brother Watching You? In California, All You Have To Do Is Ask.
California’s Information Practices Act On November 7, 1972, the voters of California added the words “and privacy” to Article I, Section 1 of the California Constitution to guarantee an inalienable...
View ArticleHow Long Is The SEC Required To Keep Your Form 4?
Earlier this year, I tried to figure out the rules applicable to record retention at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Here is what I’ve learned: The Federal Records Act of 1950, codified at 44...
View ArticleComment Letters And The APAs
Yesterday, Broc Romanek wrote that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission had removed a comment letter from its website. This caught my attention because I teach Administrative Law at the University...
View ArticleCourt Orders Disclosure Of Venture Capital Fund Performance
California’s analog to the Freedom of Information Act is the Public Records Act, Government Code § 6250 et seq. In enacting the the Public Records Act, the legislature quite properly found and...
View ArticleCourt Rules Private Fund Data Are Not Public Records
Private equity and venture capital funds like public pension fund money but they don’t necessarily like the consequences of having the government as an investor. As noted in this post, this was...
View ArticleHow A Public Records Act Request Can Be Better Than A Subpoena Duces Tecum
The California counterpart to the Freedom of Information Act (aka FOIA) is the Public Records Act, Government Code Section 6250 et seq. In a recent unpublished decision, the Court of Appeal succinctly...
View ArticleWas California’s Public Records Act Founded On The Aventine Hill?
I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that the ancient Romans chose to explain their origins with tales of defeat, invasion, fratricide, communal rape and assassination. The city, which eventually...
View ArticleDoes The DBO’s Draft Tribal Consultation Policy Violate the Public Records Act?
Three years ago, California Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. issued Executive Order B-10-11. Among other things, Governor Brown ordered: that it is the policy of this Administration that every state...
View ArticleCalifornia AG Declares Whistleblower Tally A State Secret
Since 2004, the California Attorney General has been required to maintain a whistleblower hotline to receive calls from persons who have information regarding possible violations of state or federal...
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Revealed! The Numbers The Attorney General Didn’t Want You To See
Since 2003, the California Attorney General has been required to maintain “a whistleblower hotline to receive calls from persons who have information regarding possible violations of state or federal...
View ArticleWhat, If Anything, Is The Attorney General’s Office Hiding?
In January, I decided to update an earlier post regarding the number of calls made to the California Attorney General’s hotline mandated by Labor Code Section 1102.7. A few years earlier, I had...
View ArticleHow The Defend Trade Secrets Act Of 2016 Opens The Door To Disclosure Of...
François-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, once famously wrote “Ce corps qui s’appelait et qui s’appelle encore le saint empire romain n’était en aucune manière ni saint, ni romain, ni empire...
View ArticleWhy The SEC Isn’t Vegas
Last week, I wrote that the Securities and Exchange Commission is sending letters to registrants requesting information about compliance with Regulation G and Item 10(e) of Regulation S-K. These...
View ArticleWant To “Bury” Your Response To SEC Comments? Here’s How
I have long assumed that when you search “CORRESP” by issuer name, you would see all correspondence filed on EDGAR with respect to that issuer. I was therefore surprised when I recently searched for a...
View ArticleUnder The Public Records Act, A Losing Party May Be The Prevailing Party
When the California legislature enacted the Public Records Act, it declared “access to information concerning the conduct of the people’s business is a fundamental and necessary right of every person...
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