27 May New Head of SEC Corporation Finance Keith Higgins: Rulemaking At Last?

A few weeks ago the Securities and Exchange Commission announced a new permanent head of its Division of Corporation Finance, Keith Higgins. He is currently a partner at the law firm Ropes & Gray in Boston and is expected to start in June. Also, interim head Lona Nallengara was pushed upstairs as Chairman Mary Jo White’s new chief of staff. Higgins has spent 30 years helping companies go public and advising them once they do. Best of luck to both.

One hopes, now that pretty much the whole senior staff has been put in place for Ms. White’s chairmanship, that the Commission can get back to the serious work of making rules required by the Dodd-Frank Act and Jumpstart our Business Startups (JOBS) Act. Under the former, we are particularly awaiting the “bad actor” rule, which will prohibit folks with certain bad things in their background to be involved in private offerings. Under the latter, and somewhat related, are the rules ending the ban on general solicitation in private offerings, so long as all the eventual investors are “accredited.”

According to The DealFlow Report, many are saying it would be more politic for White to get the bad actor rule in place first to make the easing of regulations represented by the end of the general solicitation ban more tolerable. Both of these issues have split the four commissioners other than White, so we will see which way she leans as an early test of her policies. Both rules have been delayed for quite awhile. We will monitor as always!