02 Jan Mr. Trump and the SEC

First, happy new year to my faithful blogees! As President-elect Trump has been organizing his proposed Cabinet, we haven’t heard much yet about appointments to administrative agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trump gets to appoint three open SEC commissioner spots out of five. The rule is no party can have more than 3 of the 5 slots. There’s now one Dem and one GOP (once Chair Mary Jo White leaves on January 20). So he gets the Chair, which presumably will be a Republican, and then one of each party as well. Technically each Commissioner serves a 5 year term, with one person’s term ending each year.

Once that’s done, what? As a recent article in Fortune points out, Trump appointed former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins, a pretty conservative guy, to his transition team. Atkins, who some say could be the next SEC Chairman, was in favor of reduced regulation and strengthening small business capital formation with initiatives like the JOBS Act, and not a big fan of the ever-expanding powers of the PCAOB.

There is another recent serious contender for Chair according to Bloomberg, one Debra Yang, a former US Attorney. Yang, among other things, led the team that concluded that Jersey Gov. Christie did no wrong in the Bridgegate scandal. She has little experience in securities law which could be a challenge. Let the bookmaking begin!