Judge Extends SEC v. AT&T Joint Status Filing for Second Time

U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer for Southern New York signed an order Tuesday (docket 1:21-cv-01951) extending to Dec. 5 from Monday the deadline for the SEC and AT&T to file a joint status letter with a proposed schedule through the start of trial, including an estimate about how long a trial would last. Engelmayer received a joint request from SEC and AT&T attorneys to extend the deadline, said his order. It was the second such postponement since his Sept. 8 opinion denying the parties’ cross motions for summary judgment in the case, in which the SEC alleges AT&T violated the commission’s fair disclosure regulation (Reg FD) (see 2209200023). U.S. Magistrate Judge Jennifer Willis held a Sept. 26 settlement conference that apparently didn’t lead to a resolution. The March 2021 case stems from SEC allegations that AT&T and three members of its investor relations team conspired to selectively disclose “material nonpublic information” (MNPI) to analysts at 20 Wall Street firms with the aim of lowering their consensus forecast on Q1 2016 revenue. The goal, alleged the SEC, was to enable AT&T to beat the consensus estimate for that quarter after the company missed Wall Street’s consensus targets in two of the previous quarters. Reg FD prohibits public companies from selectively disclosing MNPI about itself or its stock to people outside the company, unless it also discloses that information to the public.