The SEC Speaks in 2014: Beware the Data Crunchers — King & Spalding

Even more notable to securities practitioners than the attendance of Mark Cuban at this year’s SEC Speaks event (held in Washington, D.C. on February 21-22, 2014) was the start-to-finish focus of the Enforcement Division on data, data, data. Beginning with Chair Mary Jo White’s kick-off address, and extending throughout the two-day event, the Commission and its staff lauded the SEC’s increasing efforts to identify “trends,” “aberrations,” “areas of risk,” and investigative leads from the vast troves of public company disclosures and trading data the SEC routinely collects. Particularly when it comes to financial reporting, public companies—along with their executives, attorneys, and auditors—are likely to find themselves at increased risk of Enforcement scrutiny if their financial statements stand out from the pack.