Submission for OMB Review; Comment Request; Extension: Rule 701

Notice is hereby given that, pursuant to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (44 U.S.C. 3501 et seq.), the Securities and Exchange Commission (“Commission”) has submitted to the Office of Management and Budget this request for extension of the previously approved collection of information discussed below.

Rule 701(17 CFR 230.701) under the Securities Act of 1933 (“Securities Act”) (15 U.S.C. 77a et seq.) provides an exemption for certain issuers from the registration requirements of the Securities Act for limited offerings and sales of securities issued under compensatory benefit plans or contracts. The purpose of Rule 701 is to ensure that a basic level of information is available to employees and others when substantial amounts of securities are issued in compensatory arrangements. Information provided under Rule 701 is mandatory. We estimate that approximately 800 companies annually rely on the Rule 701 exemption and that it takes 2 hours to prepare each response. We estimate that 25% of the 2 hours per response (0.5 hours) is prepared by the company for a total annual reporting burden of 400 hours (0.5 hours per response × 800 responses).

An agency may conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid 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 within 30 days of publication of this notice by September 21, 2022 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: PRA_Mailbox@sec.gov.

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