Patrick Cleary

Why Upcoming Changes at the SEC Could Make USAID Reforms Seem Like Child’s Play Future Chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Paul Atkins and recently anointed “Counselor to the SEC Chairman” Andrew Vollmer were two of the special contributors (specifically credited) with drafting the financial regulation section of Project 2025. Hence, their specific plans are already a matter of record. I served during the entirety of Paul Atkins’s tenure as an SEC Commissioner (Atkins is a brilliant SEC legend and he will be phenomenal as SEC Chairman). I also served during the entirety of Andrew Vollmer’s tenure as SEC Deputy General Counsel (Vollmer is a securities law ace who made his bones asserting “executive privilege” during the Madoff Congressional hearings (not kidding, this was epic, watch for yourself at youtu.be/RZtvQbp2ixc?si=cQ2g…). Among other things, Atkins and Vollmer, per Project 2025, advocate: — Eliminating all SEC administrative proceedings (yes, long overdue, the lack of due process and kangaroo court of SEC administrative proceedings is already judicially declared as done and done); — Mandating that SEC enforcement investigations be limited to two years, tops, no extensions (yes, hallelujah, no SEC investigation should take more than two years, but SEC investigations often drag on for a lot longer); — Reducing the number of managers per employee (yes, long overdue, the SEC’s layers of unnecessary managerial bureaucracy has always been maddening for most SEC employees); — Merging SEC offices and divisions to eliminate redundancy (yes, the SEC is like Noah’s Ark, there are 2 of everything); — Abolishing FINRA and the PCAOB and folding them into the SEC (yes, both FINRA and the PCAOB have proven to be ineffective, bloated, rogue, secretive, opaque and impervious to reform); — Reorienting the SEC’s mission to reduce barriers to capital formation, favor transparency, and prioritize traditional financial metrics over politically driven criteria like environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards (yes, hallelujah, the politicalization of disclosure has never made any sense and was a Gary Gensler partisan debacle); — Easing the regulations surrounding entrepreneurial capital formation, including streamlining exemptions for small offerings and crowdfunding under Regulation A and Regulation CF, removing the accredited investor restriction, and allowing more flexible access to private capital markets (yes, long overdue, these old protections no longer make any sense and unnecessarily stifle innovation); and — Simplifying the securities disclosure system by organizing firms into private, intermediate, and public categories, each with scaled reporting requirements (yes, nobody reads all of the disclosure in a securities offering (except class action lawyers), it is time for meangful reform). The above proposals are just the tip of the iceberg. There are also a slew of pro-crypto proposals which make me nauseous — but the people have spoken and hey, you can’t have everything. Buckle up and get the popcorn sports fans.