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Sources told FOX Business’s Charlie Gasparino that securities lawyers have said the SEC is looking into possible manipulation cases that will be difficult to prosecute.
The Securities and Exchange Commission said it hired Renee Jones, a professor of law at Boston College, as the main regulator of state-owned companies.
Jones will oversee a division of more than 400 lawyers and accountants who write rules for companies that raise capital and disclose important news and events to shareholders. The division is playing a leading role in drafting a proposed planned rule that would require public companies to disclose more about the risks and impacts of climate change on their businesses.
Jones, 56, wrote reviews of the large private companies known as unicorns, which are valued at over $ 1 billion before going public. Over the past decade, the SEC has made it easier for private companies to raise capital, largely exempting them from agency oversight.
She will succeed interim division director John Coates, also 56, who will take over as the agency’s general counsel, the SEC said in a press release. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Ms. Jones has taught courses in securities regulation, corporate governance and financial regulation.
Jones wrote in a law review article in 2010 that if the financial crisis had damaged the credibility of the SEC, the regulator was likely to become “a stronger, more competent regulator.”
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Jones will take over the division at a time when new President Gary Gensler has presented a broad regulatory agenda, including tackling some issues that became subject to new rules during the Trump administration.
Trump-era rules increased oversight of proxy advisers such as Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. During this period, the commission also raised the bar for small shareholders to submit governance and policy proposals. to be voted on at the company’s annual meeting.
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Both of these rules adopted partisan lines, with Democratic commissioners opposing them. Now under Democratic control, the SEC said last week in a biannual disclosure that it plans to propose changes to the proxy advice and shareholder proposal rules by next spring. The agency’s two Republican commissioners, Hester Peirce and Elad Roisman, criticized the move on Monday, saying it looks like “a seesaw game with our rulebook.”
“We are disappointed that the commission is devoting our scarce resources to overhauling the newly completed rules,” the commissioners said in a statement.
The SEC’s corporate finance division is also expected to draft rules this year relating to trading structures known as special purpose acquisition companies, board diversity, officer and director operations, and to how companies monitor cybersecurity risks, according to last week’s disclosure. .
It could also address regulatory exemptions that underpin private capital markets, the opinion says. Some Democratic policymakers argue that private markets – where tech startups and hedge funds raise funds – have become too big to be off the radar of regulators. More capital is now raised privately than through public deals that provide investors with standardized information that is reviewed by the SEC, according to the regulator’s research.
Jones joined the faculty of Boston College in 2002, according to his biography on the college’s website. She previously practiced law with the firm of Boston Hill & Barlow, which closed in 2002.
In a 2017 essay, Jones wrote that private companies valued at over $ 1 billion may have evaded “governance structures and practices appropriate for companies of their size.” She partly blamed deregulation measures, including some mandated by Congress, which made the publication “increasingly obsolete.”
“Investors and policymakers must take action to address the problem of irresponsible unicorns,” she wrote in the essay, published in the University of Pennsylvania’s online law journal.
Many unicorns, including Uber Technologies Inc., have since gone public. WeWork, another startup valued at over $ 1 billion, has registered to go public through a merger with BowX Acquisition Corp.
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