The Securities and Exchange Commission plans an "aggressive rulemaking agenda" in the coming year, Paul Atkins, the agency's chairman, said Tuesday.
Speaking at The Economic Club of Washington on the one-year anniversary of his chairmanship, Atkins said the securities regulator has "recentered our enforcement program to focus on fraud and bring actions that actually address investor harm and strengthen market integrity, instead of inflating numbers to chase media headlines."
This course correction, Atkins continued in his prepared remarks, "also rests on our renewed emphasis on holding individual wrongdoers accountable, which promotes stronger deterrence and better safeguards for investors."
Fines and investor relief doubled to $17.9 billion in the 2025 fiscal year, the agency reported on April 8. The SEC levied $7.2 billion in civil penalties and ordered a return of $10.8 billion in illegal profits in the year ended Sept. 30, the SEC said in its report. That's up from $2.1 billion in civil fines and $6.1 billion of disgorgement a year earlier.
One year into the job, the agency's employee count is at 4,000, down about 20% from President Donald Trump's inauguration day, Atkins relayed during a question and answer session at the event.
As to rulemaking, Atkins has stated that he plans to release 30 rule proposals this year.
One plan now being reviewed by the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs is a proposal on semi-annual reporting. Trump called last year for a shift to semiannual reports from quarterly ones. The agency will seek comment on the plan once it's released from OIRA, Atkins said.
Atkins told House lawmakers in February that the agency is also working on an electronic delivery rule as well as updates to its rules governing off-channel communications.
The agency is also transforming its rulebook "by trimming requirements that burden the market without benefiting investors," Atkins said.
"The fourteen vexatious rule proposals that we withdrew last summer augured the methodical effort underway to conduct a first-principles review of our entire disclosure regime," Atkins said. "Over time, many requirements that began as a framework to inform have become instruments to obscure. And in losing sight of our north star of materiality, we have drifted from what a reasonable investor would consider important, to what a regulator might find interesting."
'Emerging Pressures' in Private Credit
In the near term, Atkins said, he has directed agency staff to evaluate areas under his Make IPOs Great Again agenda, and is "closely monitoring both the lending gap that private credit has filled and the emerging pressures that it has experienced, including elevated redemption requests and rising default-rate projections."
Said Atkins: "Let me be clear that opacity in this space can be an issue. That valuation, transparency and credit quality are key. That higher fees and less liquidity must be taken into account regarding the appropriateness of an investment."
The SEC's goal, "along with that of our colleagues in the federal government, is for a wider group of investors, guided by their fiduciaries, to be able to participate in broader, diversified investment choices with the information and guidance that they need to make sound decisions, with reasonable safeguards in place," Atkins said.
Photo: Diego M. Radzinschi/ALM
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