(The news featured below is a selection from the news covered in Federal Securities Law Reporter, which is distributed to subscribers of Federal Securities Law Reporter.)

Proxy Access Consideration Postponed

The SEC has postponed its consideration of proposed revisions to its rule concerning shareholder proxy initiatives. The consideration was originally scheduled for the open meeting on December 13, 2006, in light of a recent ruling ( AFSCME v. American Int'l Group, Inc.) by a federal appeals court panel (2nd Cir). That court ruled that a shareholder proposal seeking to amend a company's bylaws to establish a procedure by which shareholder-nominated candidates may be included on the corporate ballot did not relate to an election within the meaning of SEC proxy rules and thus could not be excluded from corporate proxy materials.

An SEC no-action letter and a federal district court ruling allowed the company to exclude the proposal based on Rule 14a-8(i)(8), which provides for the exclusion of a proposal relating to an election for membership on a company's board of directors. The appeals court ruled, however, that a shareholder proposal did not relate to an election under the exclusion if it simply seeks to amend the corporate bylaws to establish a procedure by which certain shareholders are entitled to include in the corporate proxy materials their nominees for the board of directors. No further information is available concerning future consideration of the measure.

Other Agenda Items

The SEC is scheduled to consider several other items at this meeting, including a late addition to the agenda. Matters previously announced include whether to 1) propose Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act bank-broker rules and an extension of the temporary exemption of banks from the broker definition, 2) repropose a rule to enable a foreign private issuer meeting specified conditions to terminate permanently its Exchange Act registration and reporting obligations under Section 12(g) regarding a class of equity securities and its Section 15(d) reporting obligations regarding a class of equity or debt securities, 3) propose interpretive guidance to assist the management of an Exchange Act reporting company, other than investment companies, in performing its annual evaluation of internal control over financial reporting, 4) propose amendments to Exchange Act Rules 13a-15 and 15d-15 to clarify that a company choosing to perform an evaluation of internal control in accordance with the interpretive guidance would satisfy the annual evaluation required by those rules, 5) adopt final rules amending the proxy provisions under Exchange Act Section 14 to provide an alternative for Internet-based disclosure, 6) propose a new antifraud rule under Section 206 of the Investment Advisers Act, 7) propose a new rule under the Securities Act to revise the criteria for natural persons to be considered "accredited investors" for purposes of investing in certain privately offered investment vehicles and 8) to re-open the comment period on proposed Rule 0-1(a)(7) under the Investment Company Act dealing with the independence and effectiveness of investment company directors.

The Commission also announced that it will consider whether to propose changes to its requirements for attestation reports. According to the SEC, Commissioner Kathleen Casey, as duty officer, determined that no earlier notice of the addition of this item was possible.