Key takeaways

• On December 4, 2015, President Obama signed into law the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, or the “FAST” Act, which includes provisions that are intended to: (i) improve access to public capital markets for “emerging growth companies,” or “EGCs,” and (ii) improve, modernize and simplify public company disclosure requirements under Regulation S-K.
• The FAST Act improves the ability of EGCs to access the public capital markets by: (i) shortening the period an EGC needs to publicly file its IPO registration statement before conducting a road show; (ii) allowing for an issuer that ceases to be an EGC prior to consummation of its IPO to be treated as an EGC for a certain period of time and (iii) providing additional flexibility for EGCs with presenting historical financial information in an IPO registration statement.
• The FAST Act also directs the SEC to: (i) allow registrants to submit a summary page on Form 10-K; (ii) implement certain near-term revisions to Regulation S-K and (iii) further study, and initiate a formal rulemaking process to implement recommendations on, how best to further modernize and simplify the disclosure requirements of Regulation S-K.