Kansas City

On May 25, 2022, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) provided notice of proposed rulemaking aimed at Investment Advisers (“Advisers”), Investment Companies and Business Development Companies (collectively “Funds”) that market themselves as incorporating environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) factors into their investment selection process or overall investment strategies. The public comment period will be open for 60 days following the SEC’s announcement. The proposed rules seek to standardize the categorization of ESG strategies and require Advisers and Funds to provide more specific disclosures in their fund prospectuses, annual reports, and brochures, as well as enhanced ESG reporting requirements on Forms N-CEN and ADV Part 1A, with the quantity of disclosures commensurate with the standardized categorizations. The SEC's proposed rules follow a related announcement of a regulatory enforcement action wherein it charged an investment adviser for misrepresenting the extent it reviewed ESG factors in the investment selection process. Ultimately, that case settled with a public censure, a cease and desist order and a penalty of $1.5 million. Given the SEC’s recent efforts to dive feet first into climate control and ESG initiatives, we fully anticipate that the SEC’s efforts will have a ripple effect throughout the retail distribution of ESG products by broker/dealers. In our opinion, the SEC and other regulators will later look to broker/dealers to exercise a reasonable amount of due diligence to ensure that certain products are in fact “green” before onboarding and advertising products as such. We discuss our thoughts in more detail below.

Potentially as soon as late 2022 or early 2023, a new U.S. regulatory requirement will come into effect which will affect over 25 million existing business entities and another 3-4 million new entities each year. The Corporate Transparency Act ("CTA") will require small legal entities, both domestic and foreign, to file information about themselves and the individuals who formed, own and control them with a division of the U.S. Treasury Department. Certain violations may result in the imposition of civil and criminal liability, including civil fines of $500/day, criminal fines of up to $250,000, and up to five (5) years in prison.