In remarks yesterday at the Economic Club of Washington, SEC Chair Paul Atkins once again emphasized his goal to modernize the federal securities laws – or more specifically, to “ACT”:

The answer to that is what I am calling our “A-C-T” strategy, which rests on three distinct, but interlocking pillars to: advance our regulatory frameworks into the modern era – A, clarify our jurisdictional lines – C, and transform the SEC rulebook by returning it to first principles – T.

Every initiative toward which the SEC is working—every rule that we propose, every interpretation that we release, and every institutional reform that we undertake—largely falls into at least one of those three categories.

Chair Atkins goes on to explain his view that disclosure reform falls under the “transform” prong (and helps “Make IPOs Great Again”). Here’s an excerpt:

More than a corporate milestone, I believe that every IPO is also an invitation for workers and savers to participate in the prosperity of the next generation of American enterprise. When fewer companies extend that invitation, fewer Americans receive it.

So, as I have indicated on several occasions, we are working to reverse the precipitous decline in public companies. A central objective for this goal is to rationalize disclosure requirements by delivering the minimum dose of regulation, again with materiality as our north star. Further, as a disclosure agency and not a merit regulator, the SEC should not use its rules to indirectly regulate matters—or put its thumb on the scale for issues—that should be left to the States, including corporate governance.

Looking ahead, I am eager for the Commission to propose rules that execute my Make IPOs Great Again agenda. For proposals in the near term, I have instructed the Commission staff to evaluate the following ideas: (1) adopting a regulatory IPO “on-ramp” that supplements the concept that Congress designed in the JOBS Act; (2) expanding the existing accommodations that are currently available only for emerging and smaller companies to more businesses; (3) providing nearly all public companies with an easier path to “shelf registration,” which allows them to access the public markets quickly and when market conditions are ideal; and (4) giving companies the optionality for a quarterly or semiannual regulatory filing cadence.

If you want to hear more from Chair Atkins, don’t miss the podcast he launched last week! The series is aimed at giving an “inside look” at the SEC’s work and will feature guests from inside and outside the agency.

– Liz Dunshee