Following the 2016 election, corporate governance circles have focused intently on what will happen in the nation’s capital with regard to a potential roll back of the current regulatory regime. The Trump Administration immediately signaled a strong desire for wide-ranging regulatory reform through a series of executive orders directed at federal agencies. Subsequent Congressional and agency actions initiated the potential unwinding of a broad swath of existing regulations. In the governance and disclosure world, the Republican-controlled Congress adopted a joint resolution suspending the resource extraction disclosure rules. In June, the House passed the Financial CHOICE Act which would repeal many of the governance-related provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (disclosures of CEO pay ratio and hedging policies) and limit the scope of other provisions (clawbacks), prohibit the SEC from mandating the use of universal proxy cards and increase shareholder proposal thresholds. Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission revised its rule-making docket under newly appointed Chairman Clayton’s leadership and pushed all of the unfinished Dodd-Frank related rules (pay-for-performance disclosure, clawbacks and disclosure of hedging policies) and some additional governance rule-making (universal proxy cards and board diversity) to the back burner.

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