On November 22, 2019, The Nasdaq Stock Market LLC (“Nasdaq” or the “Exchange”) filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission”), pursuant to Section 19(b)(1) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (“Exchange Act”) ^[1] and Rule 19b-4 thereunder,^[2] a proposed rule change to adopt a rule specifying Nasdaq's ability to request information from a listed company regarding the number of unrestricted publicly held shares when Nasdaq observes unusual trading characteristics in a security or a company announces an event that may cause a contracting in the number of unrestricted publicly held shares, halt trading in such company's securities upon such a request, and potentially request a listed company to increase its number of unrestricted publicly held shares.

The proposed rule change was published for comment in the Federal Register on December 12, 2019.^[3] On January 24, 2020, pursuant to Section 19(b(2) of the Exchange Act,^[4] the Commission designated a longer period within which to either approve the proposed rule change, disapprove the proposed rule change, or institute proceedings to determine whether to disapprove the proposed rule change.^[5] On March 4, 2020, the Commission instituted proceedings under Section 19(b)(2)(B) of the Exchange Act ^[6] to determine whether to approve or disapprove the proposed rule change.^[7] On June 5, 2020, the Commission designated a longer period for Commission action on the proposed rule change.^[8] On July 8, 2020, the Exchange withdrew the proposed rule change (SR-NASDAQ-2019-091).