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August 13, 2018 at 05:46 PM
While the closing on Tuesday of the comment period on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s advice standards package — and the letters that flooded in as a result — was the big news of the week, another significant comment deadline looms on a long-awaited ETF rule.
The SEC proposed on June 28 a plan to allow many ETFs to come to market without first obtaining exemptive relief from the Investment Company Act of 1940 — a plan that updates and attempts to streamline 26 years of ETF approvals by the agency through hundreds of exemptive orders. The comment period ends on Oct. 1.
I caught up this week with David Grim, the former head of the SEC’s Division of Investment Management (the division charged with putting the ETF plan together), to chat about the SEC’s plan.
Grim, now a partner at Stradley Ronon in Washington, spent 20 years in the SEC’s IM division, including a stint as its director. He says an ETF rule “has been a priority of the commission for a long time,” with one being proposed “right before the financial crisis.”
However, “priorities changed after the crisis hit, and the rule did not get adopted at the time,” he relayed.
There’s been a consensus at the commission “around the importance of getting a rule on the books.”
