An essential corrective to the debate over corporate political spending disclosure has been posted by Michael Guttentag:
Mandatory disclosure is a central feature of securities regulation in the United States, yet there is little agreement regarding precisely how the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) should determine what public companies are required to disclose. The current debate about whether the SEC should require the disclosure of political spending by public companies is but one example of this lack of consensus.
In this Article I first answer the more general question of how to evaluate any proposed public company mandatory disclosure requirement. I then apply this new evaluation method to the specific question of whether public companies should be required to disclose political spending. This analysis shows, based, in part, on previously unpublished empirical findings, that the evidence does not support requiring public companies to disclose political spending.Guttentag, Michael D., A New Light on Public Company Political Spending Disclosure (May 16, 2014). Columbia Business Law Review, 2014, Forthcoming; Loyola-LA Legal Studies Paper No. 2014-25. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2438078
It is a must read.
