TheCorporateCounsel.net

Yesterday, the President-elect announced more picks for leadership roles in the incoming administration, including the one we’ve all been waiting for: SEC Chair.

The nominee – Paul Atkins – is already familiar to many practitioners. He served as an SEC Commissioner from 2002 – 2008 (and during that time, current SEC Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda served as his Counsel). He held several other roles at the agency prior to that, including as Chief of Staff to then-Chair Richard Breeden and later as Counsel to SEC Chair Arthur Levitt. Since then, Mr. Atkins founded and has been running a prominent consulting firm, Patomak Global Partners, among other activities.

The confirmation process should give us more insight into the priorities of an Atkins SEC. For now, it’s a safe bet that at least some of those priorities will differ from what we’ve experienced during Chair Gensler’s tenure. In fact, the WSJ Editorial Board nicknamed him the “Anti-Gensler” in an op-ed yesterday, with lots of optimism that he’ll curb enforcement efforts, improve our capital markets, and work to lower costs for public companies & investors.

In this roundup of Atkins’ past commentary, Cooley’s Cydney Posner points out that he has also criticized the shareholder proposal process, saying the SEC had “eviscerated the exclusions,” as well as the notion of “decision-useful” (vs. “material”) information for investors, the trend of expanding risk factors, and many other requirements that have created compliance challenges for companies. This Politico article offers a few more predictions (also see reporting from the WSJ and Bloomberg):

As chair, Atkins would likely weigh unwinding parts of Gensler’s agenda and crafting bespoke rules for the crypto market — something Trump himself vowed to do on the campaign trail. While speaking at a Federalist Society event in April, Atkins called the lack of regulatory clarity around crypto a “fundamental underlying issue” that the SEC needs to address.

He also said that a change in administration would likely also mean a move to undo some of the rules enacted under Gensler. But Atkins added that he hoped the SEC would “get beyond that,” too.

We don’t know exactly when the agency’s new chair will be confirmed. This nomination is at least a month ahead of schedule compared to the last couple of go-rounds, when nominations were announced in January, but whether that will affect the Senate’s timeline is still an open question. Back in 2020 when Chair Gensler was nominated, the process went like this: nomination announced in late January, Senate Banking Committee met to approve the nomination in early March and full Senate confirmation came along in mid-April. As previously announced, Chair Gensler is leaving the SEC on January 20th.

– Liz Dunshee