The era of SEC Chair Paul Atkins’s tenure has been off to a blistering start – dating back to when Commissioner Mark Uyeda was Acting Chair – and the latest Reg Flex Agenda indicates that changes continue to be afoot that should benefit companies. Atkins issued this statement to explain the Reg Flex Agenda in which he notes his priorities of:
- Crypto Rules: Clear rules of the road for the issuance, custody, and trading of crypto assets while continuing to discourage bad actors from violating the law.
- Deregulation: Deregulatory rule proposals to reduce compliance burdens and facilitate capital formation, including by simplifying pathways for raising capital and investor access to private businesses. It discusses amending existing rules to improve and modernize them as well as address disclosure burdens.
- Rethinking CAT: Rethinking the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT), especially in the wake of a recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
- Withdrawal of Rules: Withdrawal of a host of items from the last Administration that do not align with the goal that regulation should be smart, effective, and appropriately tailored within the confines of our statutory authority
As I’ll be blogging about soon, whether all of these things happen often is aspirational – but I tend to think these all will happen, just perhaps not on the timeline noted in this Spring 2025 Reg Flex Agenda (I’ve just listed the Corp Fin-related items):
- Prerule Stage
- Foreign Private Issuer Eligibility
- Consolidated Audit Trail
- Proposed Rule Stage (all with dates of April 2026)
- Rule 144 Safe Harbor
- Crypto Assets
- Enhancement of EGC Accommodations & Simplification of Filer Status
- Shelf Registration Modernization
- Updating the Exempt Offering Pathways
- Rationalization of Disclosure Practices
- Shareholder Proposal Modernization
- Transfer Agents
- Crypto Market Structure Amendments
This is a whole lot to accomplish by April – so it’s likely that many of these will slide past that date.
Noticeably, there isn’t a rulemaking noted related to executive compensation disclosures – the topic of a recent roundtable and many comments from the public – but that likely is covered by the vague “Rationalization of Disclosure Practices,” that has a description of: “The Division is considering recommending that the Commission propose rule amendments to rationalize disclosure practices to facilitate material disclosure by companies and shareholders’ access to that information.”
Authored by
Broc Romanek