On June 20, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced the adoption of new rules and amendments to its proxy disclosure rules that would generally prohibit national securities exchanges from listing the equity securities of an issuer that is not in compliance with compensation committee independence requirements. Publication of the rule and amendments follow an initial proposal published in March 2011, and the final version addresses comments received by the SEC.
As we discussed in our earlier blog post, foreign private issuers that disclose in their annual report the reasons for not having an independent compensation committeee would be exempt from the relevant independence requirements. Those subject to U.S. proxy rules, however, would also be subject to certain disclosure related to compensation consultants.
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