Gary Gensler is not yet Securities and Exchange Commission chairman. He’s not even, in these busy days on the Senate floor, in any danger of receiving a hearing on his appointment as such any time soon.
No matter: The folks who are running the SEC are doing so as though Gensler’s already in charge.
The move by the Securities and Exchange Commission allows more enforcement supervisors to authorize investigations, permitting about 36 senior officials at the agency to subpoena companies and individuals for records or testimony. The agency during the Trump administration withdrew that authority from supervisors and allowed only two officials to approve new probes, saying it would result in more consistent decisions about which tips and complaints justified investigations…. The number of new investigations fell every year during the Trump administration, from 1,063 in 2016 to 827 in 2019, according to the most recent figures published by the SEC….
Under Mr. Gensler, the SEC is expected to become more active….
In a court filing, the agency said a monitor is needed to protect investor assets and prevent the New York private-equity firm from disposing of assets that could be used to recover investors’ capital…. “The principal source for potential investor recovery is revenue generated by the several dozen automobile dealerships owned by GPB Capital,” the SEC said in a court filing to support its request for an independent monitor. “These dealerships have contractual relationships with lenders and manufacturers that are now at risk of termination because of, among other things, Gentile’s arrest.”
Well, if that’s the way things are going to be going at Gensler’s SEC, those he’ll be regulating want him to know that they’ve got some pretty good lawyers, too.
Nasdaq Inc and the New York Stock Exchange have each sued the Securities and Exchange Commission, seeking to block a plan by the regulator to overhaul public data feeds that broadcast stock prices to investors, court filings show.
Under the SEC plan, approved in December, supply and demand data for stocks would be added to public feeds, broadening access to the information which the exchanges currently sell to professional traders at a premium…. The Wall Street Journal reported that Cboe Global Markets, which operates the Chicago Board Options Exchange, was also suing the SEC over the issue.
SEC Expands Enforcement Staff’s Power to Start New Investigations [WSJ]
SEC Seeks Outside Monitor to Protect GPB Capital Investors [WSJ]
Nasdaq, New York Stock Exchange sue SEC over planned overhaul of public data feeds [Reuters]