Source: https://ogalaws.wordpress.com/category/securities-regulation/
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 12:15:35+00:00

Document:
Tweaking Regulation FD for the social media age – is it time for a fuller Restatement?
(2) Promptly, in the case of a non-intentional disclosure. (Emphasis added).
In August, 2008, the Commission issued guidance that permitted the above disclosures to be made through company websites, with certain caveats and conditions.
Recently, on April 2, 2013, the Commission has again taken a step to address the advancements of (not so new anymore) media in allowing publicly-traded companies and other issuers to disclose material nonpublic information through the Facebook and Twitter social networking channels.
“We do not wish to inhibit the content, form, or forum of any such disclosure, and we are mindful of placing additional compliance burdens on issuers. In fact, we encourage companies to seek out new forms of communication to better connect with shareholders”.
Here now, we have a treble conundrum – (a) what is the order of precedence of the many “forms of communication” or channels now available to issuers for such information releases; (b) which channels will each issuer even use; and (c) will/should there be any distinction in channels used by any issuer or any group or industry of issuers, for releases of different types of information??
“We believe that company disclosure should be more readily available to investors in a variety of locations and formats to facilitate investor access to that information. […] A company’s website is an obvious place for investors to find information about the company, and a substantial majority of large public companies already provide access to their Commission filings through their websites”.
It therefore behooves the Commission to now go a little bit further in mandating that issuers – (a) define such an ordering or precedence of channels; (b) state which channels that they will use; and (c) address any distinctions in channel use for releases of different types of information. Such mandate or guidance would better fit Regulation FD to the times and accord with the Commission ethos on disclosure, generally, and social media, specifically.
In no particular order, I count 22 (“twenty-two”) channels through which issuers can make statements or otherwise regularly or occasionally disseminate information; whether or not material or public. These are Blogs, Press Releases, Annual Reports, interim Regulatory Filings, Websites, RSS feeds, email alerts, sms/texts, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Teleconferences, Webinars, News Conferences, EDGAR, Annual Shareholder Meetings, and Electronic Shareholder Forums. The foregoing number 17, and so the remaining 5 (“five”) channels will be introduced and described in more detail, below.
(iii) a Virtual Responsibility group (VR) of 7+5 channels– where the speaker, author, or poster can be anyone specifically or apparently authorized to speak by or on behalf of the issuer, the audience is not restricted to persons with a direct interest in the issuer or the business of the issuer, and the consequences for material mis-statements or intentionally and misleadingly incomplete disclosures can be broad, international, and damaging in the extreme. Despite these dangers, the medium is virtual and may potentially “go viral” with a quickness, and so self-regulation and corporate responsibility are more the norm. This group includes Twitter (with a current character limit that cannot possibly accommodate both the message and all necessary and advisable disclaimers), YouTube (where hundreds of thousands, or even millions of “hits”/“views” can precede adult supervision and removal of the content in question), interactive or standalone blogs, RSS feeds, email alerts, sms/texts, and print or electronic Press Releases.
(iii) 1 grouped channel in LR-C (book signings, CEO roundtables, economic fora, and outside and often-unscripted and unaccompanied conferences and other speaking engagements).
“[…] where disclosure of information is required under the Exchange Act, we have allowed companies to make such information available to investors on their web sites with their web sites serving, depending on the circumstance, as a supplement to EDGAR, as an alternative to EDGAR, or as a stand-alone method of providing information to investors independent of EDGAR”.
Hence, on one interpretation of this sentence, so long as there is a central or reference site as a recognized channel on which the data is publicly posted and accessible, the data can also be posted elsewhere, on other similarly recognized channel(s) “reasonably designed to provide broad, non-exclusionary distribution of the information to the public”.
For reference sites, I would suggest that co-equality be given to EDGAR, the issuer’s main website, and the issuer’s main Facebook page. In this way, any or all could be used, deemed, and construed as categorically authoritative. EDGAR, due to the regulatory filings made there; the issuer’s main website, due to its centrality and expected diligent maintenance; and the issuer’s main Facebook page, due to its popularity as a means to engage in 2-way communication with shareholders, customers, and the public at large. This triple redundancy also covers for instances where either or both of EDGAR and the issuer’s main website may be inaccessible due to maintenance or unwanted intrusion, in which event a Facebook alert might be speedily issued and significant information releases in the interim period would rapidly there migrate; with the corollary for the issuer’s main website when both EDGAR and Facebook are unavailable. Of course, issuers will need to ensure that their Facebook pages are pre-set to be fully open and accessible, including for those page visitors who are not Facebook subscribers – as there are still some people who have yet to sign-up, or who were signed-up but have now left.
The Commission notes that issuers with large Analyst followings and market capitalizations may need to do little to alert the market to new postings on their websites, which will be rapidly picked up and disseminated by the financial press, but that those issuers with less of a following or market capitalization “may need to take more affirmative steps so that investors and others know that information is or has been posted on the company’s web site and that they should look at the company web site for current information about the company”. As an example for purposes of this proposal and comment, that might be a blog post, email alert, RSS feed, or tweet (in the VR group) detailing and alerting to the material as already posted on that issuer’s main website; or perhaps a teleconference, news conference, or interim regulatory filing (in the LR group) undertaking to post the materials on the issuer’s main website or another Reference Site at or by a set date and time.
“If the information is important, companies should consider taking additional steps to alert investors and the market to the fact that important information will be posted – for example, prior to such posting, filing or furnishing such information to us or issuing a press release with the information. Adequate advance notice of the particular posting, including the date and time of the anticipated posting and the other steps the company intends to take to provide the information, will help make investors and the market aware of the future posting of information, and will thereby facilitate the broad dissemination of the information”.
It is important to state that blogs were specifically in the contemplation of the Commission when the 2008 guidance was issued, with the Commission opining at note 60, that “[f]or purposes of Regulation FD, a posting on a blog, by or on behalf of the company, would be treated the same as any other posting on a company’s web site. The company would have to consider the factors outlined above to determine if the blog posting could be considered “public””. A blog may highlight additional data on the Reference Site with appropriate wording, but a tweet will need to be very narrowly-tailored as a mere “tombstone” announcement or pointer arrow, in order to avoid attendant liability for omission of material facts in electronic and other disclosures under antifraud and related provisions of the Securities Act (1933), the Securities Exchange Act (1934) and their related Rules and Regulations as amended; and other applicable laws. So long as the URL is correctly referenced by that tweet, then there should be no misstatement of material fact.
In addition, the Commission was already considering the use of CEO blogs as far back as 2000, when it wrote: “Company-sponsored “blogs,” which can include CEO blogs and investor relations blogs, among others, are recent additions to company web sites”. The argument can therefore be made that based on this earlier guidance, a CEO blog with a large subscription base is analogous to an issuer’s main blog, and that a CEO Facebook page with a similarly large subscriber base is also akin to the issuer’s main Facebook page. Hence, rather than competing, each may be considered and treated as a “recognized channel of distribution” in this VR group. The Commission did not explicitly state or imply this reasoning, but from a cumulative reading of their guidance and a review of the specific facts of the Netflix Investigation, such an argument if made today, should certainly have strong merit.
As stated earlier, the speakers at a news conference or at an annual shareholders’ meeting are always seen, and very often quite well-known to the audience. So too, the corporate author of an interim regulatory filing is easily discernible – even if the document is filed by accountants, auditors, or legal counsel. Things can be a little different with electronic shareholder forums, where nobody is seen or heard – but their words are; with teleconferences, where the speaker is a disembodied voice; and with webinars, where audience members may or may not know enough about the presenters to be able to put a name to a face. However, due to their very public nature and the likelihood that anything or everything said will be rapidly analyzed and acted-upon by investors, all of these live instances are tightly regulated when involving issuers. There are legal and commonsense limits on: (i) what may be said that is not certain (speculation and inaccuracy); (ii) what may be predicted that is not guaranteed (earnings estimates and guidance, whether qualitative or quantitative); (iii) work or negotiations recently commenced or in progress (contract negotiations that may or may not close, significant milestones projected or reached, and significant contracts or other engagements secured); and (iv) the type and extent of disclaimers that must accompany forward-looking data, in general. Thanks to the open-access that members of the public have to EDGAR, interim regulatory flings can also be picked-up, analyzed, and acted-upon quite rapidly. As a result, the importance of ensuring that information publications and disseminations in all channels of this group are accompanied by one or more of (a) alerts to their release; or (b) timely publication and dissemination of the same actual information through either or both of the other channel groups (SF or VR), is shown here with the greatest of clarity.
Now, knowing what is where, let us consider the following relationship matrix for this schema.
(i) Where information is first disclosed in a Static Foundational (SF) channel, alerts as to this disclosure (whether intentional or unintentional) should be timely posted or the original information should be disclosed, in either or both of a Live Regulated (LR) channel and a Virtual Responsibility (VR) channel (including the three Enhanced Virtual Responsibility channels).
(ii) Where information is first disclosed in a Live Regulated (LR) channel, alerts as to this disclosure (whether intentional or unintentional) should be timely posted or the original information should be disclosed, in either or both of a Static Foundational (SF) channel and a Virtual Responsibility (VR) channel (including the three Enhanced Virtual Responsibility).
(iii) Where information is first disclosed in a Virtual Responsibility (VR) Channel (whether or not “Enhanced”), alerts as to this disclosure (whether intentional or unintentional) should be timely posted or the original information should also be disclosed, in either or both of a Static Foundational (SF) channel and a Live Regulated (LR) channel.
Each case must be judged on its own merits, as the Commission so rightly states. However, with the ability to interlink and cross-post or simul-post on social media accounts, it is not impossible for a Facebook or blog-happy C-Suite member to simultaneously or shortly thereafter tweet a quick link of the posting that can be caught by and posted on, the issuer’s main website, blog, or Facebook page – with or without an added human intermediary, but hopefully with prior clearance as to both postings, by the IR Director and legal counsel. However, if a selective (VR tweet) disclosure of material non-public information follows a selective (webinar Q&A or other unscripted LR) disclosure of the same, then the third SF group (Form 8-K in EDGAR, the issuer main website, and the issuer main Facebook page) will remain open for a corrective and “public” disclosure within the prescribed time limits, before greater liabilities and penalties can accrue.
“Indeed, one of the key benefits of the Internet is that companies can make information available to investors quickly and in a cost-effective manner”.
It is notable that a number of print media houses are transitioning fully or preferably to an online format, making the speed at which they can issue story updates (and analyst updates in the financial press) as gleaned from issuer sources and sites, that much faster. In addition, a tweet or a Facebook update costs practically nothing, financially, and the effort with the limited character content of the former, is negligible. However, to follow-up on that short message, can be quite a challenge at times. The speed of dissemination advantage for the disseminator, should not come at the expense of public convenience, or lead to confusion in that investors cannot determine where to look first, or where to look for the most definitive and most frequently and recently updated statement of a relevant situation, or guidance on an issuer’s financial position.
“We emphasize for issuers that the steps taken to alert the market about which forms of communication a company intends to use for the dissemination of material, non-public information, including the social media channels that may be used and the types of information that may be disclosed through these channels, are critical to the fair and efficient disclosure of information. Without such notice, the investing public would be forced to keep pace with a changing and expanding universe of potential disclosure channels, a virtually impossible task”.
As the Commission had so rightly concluded, in order for this schema to function properly (i.e. to avoid forcing the investing public to spend time scrambling through channels in search of that information, while missing opportunities), issuers and non-issuers alike will need to state which of the 22 channels they will regularly use for their material and general disclosures in the three channel categories, in what order those channels might best be consulted, and which types of regulated information will be disseminated on which disclosure channels. This sounds complicated, but categorizing the universe of potential regulated information – both day-to-day and for special situations, will likely assist. I would propose just four such non-exhaustive categories of regulated information: (1) Availability of channels; (2) Market financial data; (3) Pending, planned, or public events; and (4) Significant public announcements. To avoid repetition, these will be defined further in the below draft format of a re-stated Regulation FD.
Collective “hashtags” Rules for these 22 Channels.
In order to work towards steady compliance with the various standards that may be applicable to the making of statements, generally, and information management in particular (always consult legal counsel for your specific situation and jurisdiction), entities – issuers and non-issuers alike, might further consider the “hashtags” rules, which read as follows.
“Since all communications made by or on behalf of a company are subject to the antifraud provisions of the federal securities laws, companies should consider taking steps to put into place controls and procedures to monitor statements made by or on behalf of the company on these types of electronic forums”.
S-ummaries, Propriety, Overviews, and Tombstones, means that each and all of these should be appropriately delineated as such (with titles, added explanatory language and terms, or website placement and display in close proximity to hyperlinks to the underlying material, where appropriate), and clear directions to readers on where and how to access the underlying information on which they are based. In addition, the propriety (of content, manner, and timing) should always be vetted prior to release in seeking the advice of counsel, which is an indicia of good faith and best efforts in attempting compliance with Regulation FD; and any other data necessarily disclosed so as to make those summaries not materially misleading, confusing, or incomplete, should be disclosed with the release, or timely thereafter with prior notice to expect it – especially (if possible) within the limited character sets of tombstone releases via Twitter.
§ 243.100 General rule regarding selective disclosure.
(2) Promptly, in the case of a non-intentional disclosure.
(iv) Who is a holder of the issuer’s securities, under circumstances in which it is reasonably foreseeable that the person will purchase or sell the issuer’s securities on the basis of the information.
(F) An oral communication made in connection with the registered securities offering after filing of the registration statement for the offering under the Securities Act.
This section defines certain terms as used in Regulation FD (§§ 243.100 -243.103).
(a) Availability of channels. “Availability of channels”, means with regard to any or all of the channels identified and defined under this § 243-101 wherein material nonpublic information and general company information may be discussed or disclosed, their status as available to the public for access, attendance, and consultation along with any restrictions or pre-conditions, or reasons for their non-availability to the extent it is known and/or prudent, with projected timelines for resumption of availability.
(3) Pending, planned or public events.
(1) A static foundational group, including as of or by the entity, a corporate website, a corporate blog, an annual report, and the Commission’s Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval (EDGAR) system.
(2) A live and regulated group, including as of or by the entity, any teleconference, webinar, news conference, annual shareholder meeting, electronic shareholder forum, or interim regulatory filing including restatements of interim and annual reports, that occurs between annual reports.
(3) A virtual responsibility group, including Twitter, YouTube, blogs, RSS feeds, email alerts, sms/texts, and print or electronic press releases.
(4) An enhanced virtual responsibility group, including as of or by the entity, any twitter account, blog, Facebook page, or personal website of a senior official or so closely identified with a senior official by sufficient members of the public to require its inclusion here, as well as any senior official book signing, roundtable, economic forum, or outside conference or speaking engagement.
The Commission recognizes and notes that this listing is not exhaustive and remains subject to change with existing and developing technologies and business practices, and company Boards of Directors are encouraged to use their own business judgment in assessing which additional channels they will place in these above categories either as and when they appear or occur or arise, or before they appear or occur or arise.
(d) Channel usage and ranking for disclosures. “Channel usage and ranking for disclosures”, shall mean the listing by an issuer of which of the channels identified herein it shall use for disclosing both general information and categories of regulated information, as well as for making general communications to investors, consumers, the markets and the public. This listing shall be accompanied by a ranking of where to look first, second, third, and so forth, in issuers’ crafting and maintenance of systems that are reasonably designed to provide broad, non-exclusionary distribution of information to the public. Such a channel usage and ranking for disclosures will prevent investing and other interested members of the public from having to scramble through multiple channels as defined herein, in search of critical and time-sensitive categories of regulated information that others can more easily find and use to guide their decision-making.
(e) (a) Intentional. A selective disclosure of material nonpublic information is “intentional” when the person making the disclosure either knows, or is reckless in not knowing, that the information he or she is communicating is both material and nonpublic.
(f) (b) Issuer. An “issuer” subject to this regulation is one that has a class of securities registered under Section 12 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (15 U.S.C. 78l), or is required to file reports under Section 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (15 U.S.C. 78o(d)), including any closed-end investment company (as defined in Section 5(a)(2) of the Investment Company Act of 1940) (15 U.S.C. 80a-5(a)(2)), but not including any other investment company or any foreign government or foreign private issuer, as those terms are defined in Rule 405 under the Securities Act (§ 230.405 of this chapter).
(g) Long weekend. “Long weekend”, shall mean a weekend that due to a fixed or floating celebration or holiday or festive event recognized as a United States federal holiday, is at least 3 (“three”) days in length to add a Friday or a Monday or both, and during the full business days or the partial business days of which long weekend any 2 (“two”) of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for all physically-trade securities, the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation (NASDAQ) system for securities of issuer’s regulated by the Commission, and the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) for all trading activities, are closed for business.
(h) Market financial data. “Market financial data” means any earnings, financial projections and data, any changes to earnings or financial projections and data, any significant or notifiable trades or movements in the securities or instruments of the entity, and any and all regulatory filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) or other domestic or foreign body of the same or similar competence. This listing is not exhaustive and company Boards of Directors are encouraged to use their own business judgment in assessing which additional events and elements they will place in this category either as and when they appear or occur or arise, or before they appear or occur or arise.
(i) Pending, planned, and public events. “Pending, planned, and public events” means any meeting of the Board of Directors or Shareholders, any public appearance or speaking engagement of a senior official of the entity as defined under this § 243.101, where material information may be discussed or disclosed (which engagement’s initial notification and the eventual attendance of persons may be conditioned on appropriate security considerations, advisories, and precautions), any real or virtual meeting with Analysts, any teleconference or press conference, any meeting of shareholders, and any other happening, prior to its happening, that the entity wishes to publicize or is required to publicize, subject to appropriate security considerations, advisories, and precautions. This listing is not exhaustive and company Boards of Directors are encouraged to use their own business judgment in assessing which additional events and elements they will place in this category either as and when they appear or occur or arise, or before they appear or occur or arise.
(j) (c) Person acting on behalf of an issuer. “Person acting on behalf of an issuer” means any senior official of the issuer (or, in the case of a closed-end investment company, a senior official of the issuer’s investment adviser), or any other officer, employee, or agent of an issuer who regularly communicates with any person described in § 243.100(b)(1)(i), (ii), or (iii), or with holders of the issuer’s securities. An officer, director, employee, or agent of an issuer who discloses material nonpublic information in breach of a duty of trust or confidence to the issuer shall not be considered to be acting on behalf of the issuer.
(d) Promptly. “Promptly” means as soon as reasonably practicable (but in no event after the later of 24 hours or the commencement of the next day’s trading on the New York Stock Exchange) after a senior official of the issuer (or, in the case of a closed-end investment company, a senior official of the issuer’s investment adviser) learns that there has been a non-intentional disclosure by the issuer or person acting on behalf of the issuer of information that the senior official knows, or is reckless in not knowing, is both material and nonpublic.
(1) Except as provided in paragraph (e) (k)(3) and paragraph (k)(4) of this section, an issuer shall make the “public disclosure” of information required by § 243.100(a) by furnishing to or filing with the Commission a Form 8-K (17 CFR 249.308) disclosing that information.
(2) An issuer shall be exempt from the requirement to furnish or file a Form 8-K if it instead disseminates the information through another method (or combination of methods) of disclosure in accordance with its channel usage and ranking for disclosures and section (k)(3) or (k)(4), as appropriate, that is reasonably designed to provide broad, non-exclusionary distribution of the information to the public.
(1.1) the issuer shall not make the additional or corrective disclosures due to their potential to unduly publicize the workings of a pending internal investigation or law enforcement activity; to disclose a critical vulnerability in the national security or critical infrastructure; to potentially and adversely impact upon the fiscal viability or key activities of an issuer involved in functions of critical infrastructure or national security; or to adversely impinge upon competition or any pending merger, acquisition, or reorganization.
(ii) In any and all of (k)(3)(i)(A) through (k)(3)(i)(F) except (k)(3)(i)(F)(aa), the issuer shall also disclose on either or both of a live regulated channel and a virtual responsibility channel, notification of the location and the actual availability or pending availability of that material nonpublic information or a corrective disclosure within 12 (“twelve”) hours of the original release, whether or not the release occurs during a trading day or over a weekend or long weekend.
(iii) In the case of (F)(aa), the issuer shall also disclose on either or both of a live regulated channel and a virtual responsibility channel, notification of the location and the actual availability or pending availability of the notification or other relevant information within 12 (“twelve”) hours before or after its original application for a CSD, and within 2 (“two”) hours after receipt of each subsequent item of guidance or direction from the Commission, whether or not the initial release occurs, or the CSD application or subsequent guidance or direction is received, during a trading day or over a weekend or long weekend.
With the advent and wide availability of mobile productivity tools and applications, the Commission does not see it as an undue burden for an issuer to be required to post material nonpublic information or any corrective disclosure after the intentional or unintentional release of material nonpublic information, either or both of which may well already be readily available to the senior officer responsible for the corrective disclosure as an email attachment or other portable document, to a given channel after a trading day or over a weekend or Long Weekend.
(iii) In any and all of (k)(4)(ii)(A) through (k)(4)(ii)(F) except (k)(4)(ii)(F)(aa), the issuer shall also disclose on either or both of a live regulated channel and a virtual responsibility channel, notification of the location and the actual availability or pending availability of that material nonpublic information or a corrective disclosure within 12 (“twelve”) hours of the original release, whether or not the release occurs during a trading day or over a weekend or long weekend.
(iv) In the case of (F)(aa), the issuer shall also disclose on either or both of a live regulated channel and a virtual responsibility channel, notification of the location and the actual availability or pending availability of the notification or other relevant information within 12 (“twelve”) hours before or after its original application for a CSD, and within 2 (“two”) hours after receipt of each subsequent item of guidance or direction from the Commission, whether or not the initial release occurs, or the CSD application or subsequent guidance or direction is received, during a trading day or over a weekend or long weekend.
(f) Senior official. “Senior official” means any director, executive officer (as defined in § 240.3b-7 of this chapter), investor relations or public relations officer, or other person with similar functions.
(l) Senior official. “Senior official” means for purposes of this Regulation FD (§§ 243.100 -243.103) and with regard to an issuer, any member of the board of directors, any executive officer charged with overall administration or operations, any officer in charge of a principal business unit or division or function, including without limitation, contingencies, finance, human resources, information or technology systems, international operations, investor relations, legal affairs, logistics, marketing, public relations, regulatory compliance, sales, or any significant project or initiative or policymaking function, whether styled as a director, or a president or a vice-president, or otherwise, and including other senior officials with the same or similar functions in any subsidiary of the issuer, as well as the issuer and the issuer representative or issuer representatives as the case may be in a business combination or joint venture or consortium or coalition in which the issuer or a subsidiary of the issuer holds an overall voting position or a right to the gross or net receivables in excess of 15% (“fifteen”) percent of the total in any class or sub-class of instrument, whether or not contingent, evidencing a right to such voting position or a right to share in the gross or net receivables of a business combination or joint venture or consortium or coalition. Any other officer or employee or authorized agent of the issuer who is not a senior official by title or function but who has established what the issuer or a third-party may reasonably consider to be a significant following, readership, subscriber base or like status in the social or professional mileu whether through or as a demonstrably recognized channel of distribution for matters of or relating to the issuer, shall also be considered and treated by the issuer as a senior official for purposes of this Regulation FD.
(m) (g) Securities offering. For purposes of § 243.100(b)(2)(iv) [iii – Dodd Frank, 10.4.2010].
(iii) If an offering other than those specified in paragraphs (a) and (b) of this section, commences when the issuer files a registration statement and continues until the later of the end of the period during which each dealer must deliver a prospectus or the sale of the securities (unless the offering is sooner terminated).
(n) Significant public announcement. “Significant public announcement” means any announcement or notification to the public that could be reasonably considered to impact the market in share price or trading volume of the securities of the issuer or otherwise impact upon the decision of any person or entity to invest or not invest in the issuer, including if internal to the issuer or an affiliate of the issuer any environmental events, legal and regulatory actions, investigations, incidents involving internal controls, or cyber incidents, and if external to the issuer and its affiliates but that the Board of Directors reasonably determines may have an impact in the chain of supply or the markets of the issuer or on the operations of the issuer, then any of the above events of any other entity or party or group or affiliation of entities or parties in any combination, in any place or jurisdiction, including any political event or events. This listing is not exhaustive and Boards of Directors are encouraged to use their own business judgment in assessing which additional events and elements they will place in this category either as and when they appear or occur or arise, or before they appear or occur or arise.
(o) Trading day. “Trading day” is defined as running from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time from Monday through and including Friday, in accordance with the regular business hours of the physical New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, United States of America. Any earlier cessation of trading on a trading day or any curtailment or expansion of a trading day whether planned or unplanned, shall be treated for purposes of this Regulation FD, as provided in this Regulation FD (§§ 243.100 – 243.103).
§ 243.102 No effect on antifraud liability.
No failure to make a public disclosure required solely by § 243.100 shall be deemed to be a violation of Rule 10b-5 (17 CFR 240.10b-5) under the Securities Exchange Act.
Possible Approaches for Issuers and Non-issuers, alike.
Whether or not utilizing the above-presented schema and/or channel ordering, it would be prudent for issuers and non-issuers alike, to adopt some sort of channel usage and ranking for their disclosures, and post the same to standalone hard links or prominently within the legal & disclaimers sections of their Static Foundational channels (website, Facebook, filings).
“We have since encouraged “honest, carefully considered attempts to comply with Regulation FD”. (Securities and Exchange Commission in Release No. 34-69279 of April 2, 2013, at page 2, citing to Report of Investigation Pursuant to Section 21(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934: Motorola, Inc., Release No. 34-46898 (Nov. 25, 2002)).
Adopting the spirit of the foregoing (whether or not it becomes law), may become one such honest and carefully considered attempt to comply with Regulation FD in which investors and members of the general public can see the sequence of channels through which the most accurate, relevant, and timely words of an issuer or any other company might be disseminated, and consult these in order of precedence to determine the most current state of affairs. Such an approach may assist in limiting certain liabilities for companies as they provide alerts to, release to, materially disclose to, update, and otherwise educate investors, market intermediaries, customers, and the public. This will help stabilize markets at volatile times; growing Regulation FD compliance by ensuring no investor is unduly favored or unfairly disadvantaged in accessing “material nonpublic information” from or about a company; whether or not it is an “Issuer”.
 General Rule Regarding Selective Disclosure, also known as “Regulation FD” (Fair Disclosure).
Congrats to Ted Sarados, and his amazing content licensing team. Netflix monthly viewing exceeded 1 billion hours for the first time ever in June. When House of Cards and Arrested Development debut, we’ll blow these records away. Keep going, Ted, we need even more!
As (i) Netflix had not previously advised shareholders that the CEOs Facebook page would be used to make such announcements; because (ii) the CEO had not used his personal Facebook page to make such company-related announcements in the past; and (iii) as the Facebook announcement was neither accompanied by nor shortly thereafter followed by any Press Release, any announcement on the main Netflix Facebook page or website, or any interim Regulatory Filing (e.g. Form 8-K, which is an omnibus interim Regulatory Filing format), the Commission took issue and commenced an investigation. Of note, the share price stood at $70.45 at the time of posting, and the markets closed 2 hours later at 1:00 p.m. for the 4th of July holiday. Even though Reed Hastings had 200,000 + subscribers to his personal Facebook page at the time (including shareholders, analysts, bloggers, and reporters), the posted message only diffused slowly through regular and online social channels. Despite this, the Netflix share price had still risen to $81.72 at the close of the first trading day after the July 4th holiday break.
 Supra note 13 at 40-41.

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