Newell Brands To Pay Civil Penalties To Settle SEC Charges - Quick Facts

(RTTNews) - The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Newell Brands Inc. and its former CEO, Michael Polk, with misleading investors about the company's core sales growth. The parties agreed to settle the SEC charges. Newell and Polk agreed to cease and desist from violating certain provisions of the securities laws and to pay civil penalties of $12.5 million and $110 thousand, respectively.

"Today's order finds that Newell's former CEO issued an instruction to 'scrub' the company's accruals after he learned that the company was projecting a 'massive' and 'disappointing' miss for the quarter," said Mark Cave, Associate Director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement.

The SEC found that, in 2016 and 2017, Newell and Polk took actions that increased the company's publicly disclosed core sales growth in ways that were out of step with actual but undisclosed sales trends, allowing the company to announce strong or solid results in quarters it internally described as disappointing.