First, the reminder…

Many of you have already signed up for the Public Company Forum (June 18th from 9 am until noon at Queens University). For those of you who have not, I hope that you will consider joining us. It should be a lively and informative event. For more details (including how to register), please click on the Public Company Forum icon to the right of this page.

Here is a summary of the topics and speakers:

Session I—What’s New in Securities and Compliance 
Doug Harmon and Vanessa Clark—
The  Public Company Growth & Compliance Group of Parker Poe

Topics include:

• Proxy access developments and trends
• The SEC’s proposed pay-for-performance rules
• SEC whistleblower program developments

Session II— A Mergers & Acquisitions Update 
Patrick McAuley (Moderator)—Director, Transactional Services, Grant Thornton
Alan Sauber–Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer, Premier, Inc.
Erik Swanson—Vice President, Strategic & Corporate Development, Premier, Inc.
David Wallin—Senior Manager, Audit, Grant Thornton

A panel discussion of:

• Recent market, financial reporting and regulatory trends in business combinations and spin-offs
• Pre- and post-acquisition financial checklists, certification and integration issues and overcoming real world “gotchas”

Session III—Enterprise Risk Management—Competing and Complementary Roles, Trends  and Best Practices 
A-J Secrist—Director, Enterprise Regulatory Risk, Wells Fargo Securities 
Keith Keller—Managing Director, Business Advisory Services, Grant Thornton

A discussion of:

• The conflicting, overlapping and complementary roles of legal, financial and operations personnel, as well as the board of directors, in the creation and implementation of effective enterprise risk management
• Recent trends and best practices.

And the announcement…

Just last week, we rolled out the Public Company Growth & Compliance group’s new website, which you can access by clicking here. The new site is dedicated to the interrelated, multi-disciplinary needs of public companies in the following areas:

• capital markets & finance
• executive compensation
• governance, risk & compliance
• mergers, acquisitions & joint ventures
• shareholder litigation
• internal & external investigations

The website contains a substantial, searchable archive of articles, blog posts and items of note written and catalogued from a public company’s perspective. It also includes information about Public Company Forums and training opportunities for management and directors that can be tailored to specific companies. Please take a minute to click through the website and bookmark it for future reference.

As always, I appreciate your feedback and continued support.