Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton, in a 33-page testimony prepared for his appearance before the Senate Banking Committee, emphasized the Commission’s focus “on investors, innovation, and improved performance” as he ticked off the agency’s wide-ranging accomplishments over the past 12 months. The SEC has been working to modernize its practices within the constraints of legislation that is almost 90 years old while simultaneously undertaking a regulatory correction of sorts as it eased some perhaps too-stringent requirements imposed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
Getting things done
And accomplishments there are. In 2019, the SEC planned to propose or finalize 39 rules; and, as of December 2019, it had advanced 34, or 87 percent, of them, Clayton reported—despite a month-long government shutdown at the beginning of the year.
