On April 27, 2020, the Delaware Court of Chancery for the third time in a year denied a motion to dismiss a Caremark claim. The case, Hughes v. Hu, involves a derivative claim against the audit committee and officers of a Delaware corporation, Kandi Technologies Group, Inc., a Nasdaq-traded company based in China that manufactures electric car parts. In denying the motion, Vice Chancellor Laster found that there was a substantial likelihood that the defendants breached their fiduciary duty of loyalty by failing to act in good faith to maintain an adequate board-level oversight.

Two recent Delaware court decisions raised concern that Caremark duties may have expanded: Marchand v. Barnhill (declining to dismiss a Caremark claim against the board of Blue Bell Creamery for failing to make a good-faith effort to implement a system of board-level compliance monitoring and reporting to oversee the food safety of its ice cream production) to dismiss a Caremark claim against the board of Blue Bell Creamery) and In re Clovis Oncology, Inc. Derivative Litigation  (where the board “did nothing” when the company released unsubstantiated reports about cancer treatments in clinical trials).  However, it appears that the Caremark duties remain unchanged, with Delaware courts underscoring the requirement that directors implement board-level oversight of mission-critical areas in good faith to ensure that the systems are working effectively and heed warnings or “red flags” that are discovered. This view of the line of recent Caremark decisions is further reinforced by Hughes, where serious alleged failures

On May 21, 2020 the Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a number of amendments intended to reduce the complexity of financial disclosures required for business acquisitions and dispositions by U.S. public companies. These amendments will, among other things, (i) revise the requirements for financial statements and pro forma financial information for acquired businesses, (ii) revise the tests used to determine significance of acquisitions and dispositions, and (iii) for certain acquisitions of a component of a business, allow financial statements to omit certain expenses. The amendments are effective January 1, 2021, but registrants may voluntarily comply with the rules as amended prior to the effective date.

When a registrant acquires a business that is “significant,” other than a real estate operation, Rule 3-05 of Regulation S-X generally requires a registrant to provide separate audited financial statements of that business and pro forma financial information under Article 11 of Regulation S-X. The number of years of financial information that must be provided depends on the relative significance of the acquisition to the registrant. Similarly, Rule 3-14 of Regulation S-X addresses the unique nature of real estate operations and requires a registrant that has acquired a significant real estate operation to file financial statements with respect to such acquired operation.

The significance of an acquisition or disposition is based on an Investment Test, an Asset Test, and an Income Test. The amendments revise the Investment Test to compare a registrant’s investments in and advances to the acquired or disposed business to the

Companies filed a flurry of Form 8-K filings last week announcing voluntary executive officer compensation reductions driven by the COVID-19 pandemic.  While some companies disclosed the compensation changes under Item 7.01 or 8.01 on Form 8-K and others simply issued a press release, we saw an uptick in the number of companies making the disclosure under Item 5.02(e) of Form 8-K, which is triggered when a company enters into, adopts or materially amends a material compensatory plan or arrangement with the principal executive officer, principal financial officer or named executive officer.

Among companies making the disclosure under Item 5.02(e) of Form 8-K (Ford , Nordstrom , Lands’ End and Briggs & Stratton, among others), the executives generally reduced their compensation by at least 20% (and in some cases, 50% or 100%), seemingly taking the position that salary decreases of 20% or more were generally viewed as material amendments to the executives’ compensation arrangement (in parallel to the view that salary increases of 20% or more would generally would be viewed as material), although it is difficult to predict how long the reductions will continue and the true impact on the executives’ overall compensation.

Companies relying on Item 7.01 or 8.01 or a stand-alone press release likely were comfortable that based on their specific facts and circumstances, either that the decrease was not material to the executives’ compensation arrangements or, in the case where employment agreements were in place, perhaps by analogy to SEC CDI 117.13, that