On July 1, the SEC issued long-awaited proposed rules pursuant to the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. As we've discussed in prior posts here and here, Section 954 of Dodd-Frank required the SEC to direct national security exchanges not to list any company that does not adopt a policy requiring recovery of incentive-based pay received by executive officers in excess of what would have been received under an accounting restatement. Although the new rules are only proposals and they could change after public comment, it's not too early for executives to begin to plan for the financial issues they will face in the event their company issues a financial restatement, as 746 companies did in 2014.

Clawbacks of executive compensation after a financial restatement are not new, of course. After the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act authorized the SEC to claw back one year’s worth of incentive compensation from a CEO or CFO whenever there has been a financial restatement resulting from "misconduct," companies began voluntarily adopting clawback policies applicable to financial restatements.  And after the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 required clawback policies for companies receiving financial assistance under TARP that applied to "any bonus, retention award, or incentive compensation... based on statements of earnings, revenues, gains or other criteria that are later found to be materially inaccurate,"  additional companies adopted or expanded their clawback regimes. Today, most Fortune 100 companies have a clawback policy applicable to restatements (although they differ widely as to the triggering events, the types of compensation subject to clawback, whether the executive must have caused or contributed to the false or incorrect financial reporting, and the board's discretion to forgo a clawback, among other variables). But many large companies and most mid-cap and small companies have not adopted clawback policies, and virtually no company has implemented a clawback policy as severe as the Dodd-Frank legislation’s mandate. Most have been waiting for the SEC's proposed rules.

• Clawbacks
• D&O
• Dodd-Frank Act

Section 304 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 requires the CEO and CFO of an issuer that has restated its financial statements to reimburse the company for any incentive or equity-based compensation, and for the profits on any stock sales of the company’s stock, during the 12-month period following the first issuance of the offending financial statements.   Although this provision has been used sparingly by the SEC, the recent settlement of SEC investigatory charges by Saba Software, in which executives who were not charged with any wrongdoing agreed to repay bonuses and stock profits, is a cautionary tale for CEOs and CFOs of publicly traded companies.  

Saba Software became the subject of an SEC investigation and enforcement action arising out of an alleged scheme to overstate revenues by overbooking and pre-booking time statements of international consultants in order to meet pre-arranged time estimates.  As part of the settlement of the SEC charges in the fall of 2014, Saba was required to restate its financial records for the years 2009 through part of 2012.  In a contemporaneous settlement, Saba’s CEO agreed to reimburse the company for over $2.5 million in incentive and equity compensation and profits from stock sales earned following the issuance of the financial statements the company restated.  http://www.sec.gov/News/PressRelease/Detail/PressRelease/1370543035992#.VOtSdC6LXfc.

• Clawbacks
• Dodd-Frank Act
• Sarbanes-Oxley Act