Last week, The Wall Street Journal ran a Page One story on the new role of the Securities and Exchange Commission: policing the world’s securities market. But the Commission already has so much to track: public companies, the stock exchanges, brokers-dealers, mutual funds, and now hedge funds…not to mention the myriad minutiae of governance, from MD&A disclosures and insider trades to auditor independence and equity compensation plans. How can they possibly do it all?
When GAO completed a study in 2002 on the SEC’s operations, the conclusion was that, for a decade, staff could not keep pace with it’s workload for filings, applications and examinations.
