2024-08381. Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request; Extension: Rule 12d2-2 and Form 25

Upon Written Request, Copies Available From: Securities and Exchange Commission, Office of FOIA Services, 100 F Street NE, Washington, DC 20549-2736.

Notice is hereby given that pursuant to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (“PRA”) (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.), the Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission”) has submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (“OMB”) a request for approval of extension of the existing collection of information provided for in Rule 12d2-2 (17 CFR 240.12d2-2) and Form 25 (17 CFR 249.25) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (15 U.S.C. 78a et seq.).

On February 12, 1935, the Commission adopted Rule 12d2-2 ^[1] and Form 25, under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Act”), to establish the conditions and procedures under which a security may be delisted from an exchange and withdrawn from registration under Section 12(b) of the Act.^[2] The Commission adopted amendments to Rule 12d2-2 and Form 25 in 2005.^[3] Under the amended Rule 12d2-2, all issuers and national securities exchanges seeking to delist and deregister a security in accordance with the rules of an exchange must file the adopted version of Form 25 with the Commission. The Commission also adopted amendments to Rule 19d-1 under the Act to require exchanges to file the adopted version of Form 25 as notice to the Commission under Section 19(d) of the Act. Finally, the Commission adopted amendments to exempt standardized options and security futures products from Section 12(d) of the Act. These amendments were intended to simplify the paperwork and procedure associated with a delisting and to unify general rules and procedures relating to the delisting process.

Form 25 is useful because it informs the Commission and members of the public that a security previously traded on an exchange is no longer traded. In addition, Form 25 enables the Commission to verify that the delisting and/or deregistration has occurred in accordance with the rules of the exchange. Further, Form 25 helps to focus the attention of delisting issuers to make sure that they abide by the proper procedural and notice requirements associated with a delisting and/or deregistration. Without Rule 12d2-2 and Form 25, as applicable, the Commission would be unable to fulfill its statutory responsibilities.

There are 24 national securities exchanges that could possibly be respondents complying with the requirements of Rule 12d2-2 and Form 25.^[4] The burden of complying with Rule 12d2-2 and Form 25 is not evenly distributed among the exchanges, however, since there are many more securities listed on the New York Stock Exchange, the NASDAQ Stock Market, and NYSE American than on the other exchanges. However, for purposes of this filing, the Commission staff has assumed that the number of responses is evenly divided among the exchanges. Since approximately 985 responses under Rule 12d2-2 and Form 25 for the purpose of delisting and/or deregistration of equity securities are received annually by the Commission from the national securities exchanges, the resultant aggregate annual reporting hour burden would be, assuming on average one hour per response, 985 annual burden hours for all exchanges (24 exchanges × an average of 41.04 responses per exchange × 1 hour per response). In addition, since approximately 117 responses are received by the Commission annually from issuers wishing to remove their securities from listing and registration on exchanges, the Commission staff estimates that the aggregate annual reporting hour burden on issuers would be, assuming on average one reporting hour per response, 117 annual burden hours for all issuers (117 issuers × 1 response per issuer × 1 hour per response). Accordingly, the total annual hour burden for all respondents to comply with Rule 12d2-2 is 1,102 hours (985 hours for exchanges + 117 hours for issuers). The total related internal compliance cost associated with these burden hours is $269,852 ($226,796 for exchanges plus $43,056 for issuers).

The collection of information obligations imposed by Rule 12d2-2 and Form 25 are mandatory. The response will be available to the public and will not be kept confidential.

An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information under the PRA unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number.

The public may view background documentation for this information collection at the following website: www.reginfo.gov. Find this particular information collection by selecting “Currently under 30-day Review—Open for Public Comments” or by using the search function. Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information collection should be sent by May 20, 2024 to (i) www.reginfo.gov/​public/​do/​PRAMain and (ii) David Bottom, Director/Chief Information Officer, Securities and Exchange Commission, c/o John Pezzullo, 100 F Street, NE, Washington, DC 20549, or by sending an email to: [e-mail].

Dated: April 16, 2024.

Vanessa A. Countryman,

Secretary.

Footnotes

1.   See Securities Exchange Act Release No. 98 (Feb. 12, 1935).

2.   See Securities Exchange Act Release No. 7011 (Feb. 5, 1963), 28 FR 1506 (Feb. 16, 1963).

3.   See Securities Exchange Act Release No. 52029 (Jul. 14, 2005), 70 FR 42456 (Jul. 22, 2005).

4.  The staff notes that a few of these 24 registered national securities exchanges only have rules to permit the listing of standardized options, which are exempt from Rule 12d2-2 under the Act. Nevertheless, the staff counted national securities exchanges that can only list options as potential respondents because these exchanges could potentially adopt new rules, subject to Commission approval under Section 19(b) of the Act, to list and trade equity and other securities that have to comply with Rule 12d2-2 under the Act. Notice registrants that are registered as national securities exchanges solely for the purposes of trading securities futures products have not been counted since, as noted above, securities futures products are exempt from complying with Rule 12d-2-2 under the Act and therefore do not have to file Form 25.