Yesterday, the Senate confirmed Paul Atkins as the new SEC Chair. Acting Chair Mark Uyeda will continue at the SEC serving as a SEC Commissioner. Paul is a former SEC Commissioner, serving in that role from 2002 to 2008 and before that, worked at the SEC on the staff of then-SEC Chair Richard Breeden. So he is a rare incoming SEC Chair who is familiar with how the SEC works.
In fact, there are only three other times that a former SEC Commissioner subsequently became a permanent SEC Chair (so I’m not counting the numerous Acting Chairs over the years). The first one was way back when James Caffrey went directly from Commissioner to Chair in 1947. And then more recently, Elisse Walter went directly from Commissioner to Chair in 2012 and Mary Schapiro served as a Commissioner from 1984 to 1988 and then became Chair in 2009. So Paul is the second with a gap between his Commissioner and Chair roles.
You can learn a few things about what Paul believes by watching his two-hour confirmation hearing before the Senate Banking Committee – or by reading his opening statement for that hearing. His testimony bore out that the very active Acting Chair Uyeda was taking actions that Paul believes in, including facilitating more efficient capital market formation – even going so far as to suggest that there might need to be additional statutory relief from the JOBS Act through Securities Act amendments.
Authored by
Broc Romanek