It’s May 3, but 2017 begins today for the Securities and Exchange Commission with the Senate confirmation of mergers and acquisitions lawyer Jay Clayton as SEC chair on Tuesday night.
But saying it’s now full-speed ahead for the SEC after four-months of policy slow motion would be a stretch.
The agency’s division chief positions look like Swiss cheese with all of the unfilled vacancies that Clayton has to fill, while giving the SEC its first firm direction since President Donald Trump took office. Acting Chair Michael Piwowar oversaw the SEC during the interim and he purposely left key decisions for Clayton to decide.
New direction for the regulator could include a rewrite of the SEC’s 2017 exam priorities for advisors, as Peter Driscoll, acting director of Office of Compliance, Inspections and Examinations, has acknowledged.
The new SEC chair didn’t reveal much about his intentions in his Senate hearing, as is usually the case with presidential nominees.
Yet, two elements of a Clayton leadership can reasonably be surmised.
As a private attorney, he wrote several pieces on the importance of cybersecurity, so it would follow that the issue would be a SEC priority under his leadership.
In addition, he is likely to follow the Republican desire to slow the already glacial pace of completing the writing of regulations for the Dodd-Frank Act, mandated nearly seven years ago.
In the wake of Clayton’s installation, Trump still has SEC vacancies to fill. Two of the SEC’s five commissioner posts have been unfilled for close to two years and another vacancy is set for June with the end of the term of Democratic Commissioner Kara Stein.