Dodd–Frank and Privately Held Companies

The Wall Street Journal Law Blog says big regulatory changes are under way:   “Dodd-Frank is Sarbanes-Oxley on steroids. It’s an exponentially greater volume of regulation,” says Margaret Tahyar, a Davis Polk partner. The “sheer number of rules still in the pipeline makes it almost inevitable agencies will miss an increasing number of deadlines over the next year.”

The Dodd-Frank law has 849 pages, compared with 66 pages in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a 2002 law that overhauled accounting rules following the Enron scandal. The landmark Glass-Steagall Act, which created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and barriers between commercial and investment banking during the Depression, was a slim 34 pages.

Does it matter?

After all, the context for Dodd-Frank is publicly held companies.

But The Trade Lawyers Blog reports “Truthfully, there is little change in the way federal agencies approach enforcement whether the company is publicly traded or privately held, so for those who work at privately held companies, you cannot afford to ignore the standards being set for publicly traded companies.”