"One of the things that I think the investment banks that are party to the global settlement are likely doing now is taking a hard look at the global settlement provisions, to see how they may affect how those banks might modify their policies and practices going forward," Glenn R. Pollner, a partner at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in New York, said in an interview.

The SEC is also reviewing the bill's impact on the settlement, according to a person briefed on the discussions who spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter isn't public.

For those opposed to the new law, including Democratic Senators Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the provisions mark a rollback of protections that will open the door to new conflicts of interest between investment bankers and analysts.

Venture Lobbying

The National Venture Capital Association, a trade group that lobbied heavily for the new bill, said the current restrictions have held back the growth of new companies because they haven't been able to get analysts' attention.

Regulations have "limited the amount of research about these emerging companies available to investors, constraining investor interest," Mark G. Heesen, president of the venture capital group, wrote in a February letter to lawmakers that was co-signed by Duncan Niederauer, the chief executive officer at NYSE Euronext.

Supporters of the law said that protections for investors remain in place. For instance, the bill doesn't upend a rule the SEC finalized in 2003 that requires researchers to certify that their reports reflect their personal views and disclose whether they were compensated for those views.

'Robust' Rules

"To date, the discussion of these issues has often overlooked the detailed, substantial and robust regulations that continue to apply to research," Joel Trotter, a partner at Latham & Watkins LLP and a member of the IPO Task Force, a group of lawyers, academics, bankers and venture capitalists that presented a report to the Treasury Department last year on how to boost the IPO market.

Heesen and Niederauer, in their letter, said the changes in the law would correct a problem faced by many firms looking to go public -- they can't get enough interest from investors because research analysts don't have an incentive to cover smaller or marginal companies. The current rules force analysts to focus on "high-volume, high-liquidity large-cap stocks that now drive revenues for their institutions and provide the basis for their compensation," the IPO task force wrote in its October report.

"You can expect some form of research on IPO issuers to become a regular part of the deal landscape for companies that are going public," Trotter said.

SEC Opposition