TheCorporateCounsel.net

On Monday at the Investment Company Institute’s 2025 Investment Management Conference, Acting SEC Chair Mark Uyeda shared his thoughts on what a “robust and informed rulemaking process” should look like. He notes that one of his objectives is to “set forth a blueprint for restoring the Commission’s rulemaking processes to the ‘gold standard’ among regulatory agencies,” noting “the Commission should act like a super-sized freighter, not a speed boat.”

Here are some practices he promotes in his remarks:

– Restore historical comment periods — i.e., a 60-day minimum and even 90 days for more complex rulemakings.

– Avoid over-broad or dense rulemaking proposals. When rulemaking tackles too many topics, commentators may focus on one area and other aspects of the rule may get adopted with little public input.

– Re-propose rules or re-open the comment file, which may be appropriate to take into account issues commenters raised in iterating on the prior rule proposal, to respond to changed conditions or when significant time has passed since the original proposal.

– Identify the rule’s purpose and the problem it’s trying to solve upfront.

– Provide additional means for obtaining feedback to help shape proposals — including public roundtables, requests for information, concept releases, advance notices of proposed rulemaking and investor testing.

– Improve the Commission’s analysis of rules’ economic impacts by ensuring cost estimates are as up-to-date as possible and considering the impact on small entities.

– Respect the limits of the Commission’s statutory authority.

With respect to that last point, Acting Chair Uyeda notes, “We must be clear-eyed about how existing proposals fare under this rubric.” He notes that the Staff is considering withdrawing proposals, pausing recently-adopted rules or extending or delaying compliance dates — although the rules cited relate to the Division of Investment Management.

– Meredith Ervine