These are some compliance-related stories that recently caught my attention.
A snapshot of this year’s disclosure avalanche by Theo Francis in Footnoted
But the biggest filings are also getting bigger: While the top 20 filings in the first half of 2010 totaled 52,514 pages, the top 20 so far this year add up to 56,571 pages, an increase of just under 8%. And the most prolific filers are sending the SEC more documents: 16,412 of them from the top 20 companies, up 9% from the first half of 2010, when the figure was 15,028 filings. With that kind of growth, among other factors, you can imagine why Mary Schapiro wants a budget increase.
Corporate hospitality – The SFO’s five factors in the Bribery Act .com
In response to these continuing uncertainties the SFO have told us that they will be looking at five factors when considering corporate hospitality in the context of the Bribery Act.
“Social Checks” Come of Age: What Does It Mean for Employers? by Philip Gordon in Littler’s Workplace Privacy Counsel
Last month, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published a letter closing its investigation into whether an “Internet and social media background screening service used by employers in pre-employment background screening” complied with the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). At first blush, the letter appears to be a non-event. The FTC did not impose a penalty but also admonished that its “action is not to be construed as a determination that a violation may not have occurred.” While not much can be drawn from this equivocal result, the FTC’s letter does contain the following important conclusion: the “social check” service in question, known as Social Intelligence, “is a consumer reporting agency because it assembles or evaluates consumer report information that is furnished to third parties that use such information as a factor in establishing a consumer’s eligibility for employment.” Put into plain English, employers that rely on a social check service, like Social Intelligence, to search social media for information about job candidates must comply with the FCRA.
Image of file cabinets is by redjar
