The regulation of political speech, including the regulation of contributions and spending, is one of the most constitutionally delicate operations in which the government can engage. As the Supreme Court stated in Buckley v. Valeo, “[Political] contribution and expenditure limitations operate in an area of the most fundamental First Amendment activities. . . . [T]he First and Fourteenth Amendments guarantee ‘freedom to associate with others for the common advancement of political beliefs and ideas.’” The same is true of “compelled disclosure,” which the Court has noted “in itself[] can seriously infringe on privacy of association and belief guaranteed by the First Amendment.”

Given these important First Amendment concerns, and wary of creating the actuality or appearance of partisan advantage, Congress has entrusted interpretation and enforcement of the campaign finance laws to the Federal Election Commission (FEC). This agency is unique in a number of ways. Perhaps most fundamentally, it includes six commissioners evenly divided between the two major parties. Furthermore, having been the defendant in many of the most important First Amendment lawsuits of the past 40 years, it has considerable expertise in dealing with the intricate intersection of campaign finance regulation and constitutional liberties.

…continue reading: The Non-Expert Agency: Using the SEC to Regulate Partisan Politics

Today [May 1, 2013], the Commission considers issuing a release proposing rules and interpretive guidance applicable to certain market intermediaries, participants, clearing agencies, data repositories, and trade execution facilities that are involved in cross-border transactions of security-based swaps. The proposed release is over 1,000 pages, contains over 2,000 footnotes, and requests comments on more than 630 questions with many subparts. Although the questions posed are many, they are intended to be balanced and fair to solicit views from all sides. This is a welcome approach, because it contributes to a healthy debate and dialogue that is vital to the Commission’s processes.

Today, the Commission also votes to reopen the comment period on the various outstanding rulemaking releases and policy statement concerning security-based swaps and market participants to allow the public additional time to analyze and provide comments in light of our cross-border release.

The length of the cross-border release and the reopening of the comment periods reflect the complexity and importance of the issues involved in securities-based swap transactions. In issuing today’s proposal and asking for comments on the Commission’s proposed approach to regulating the securities-based swap market, the Commission recognizes the interactions among many important rules in this area. It is important, therefore, that our rules avoid gaps and loopholes, and that they work together to provide the needed transparency, accountability, and protection to our economy, the markets, and, most importantly, to investors.

…continue reading: Proposed Rules for Global Derivatives Market

In late 2012, The Wall Street Journal published a number of articles that analyzed the trading practices of certain public company executives, in many cases under trading plans that were entered into in accordance with the affirmative defense provisions adopted by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) pursuant to Rule 10b5-1 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. [1] The trades examined in the Journal articles were called into question because they were sizable and were reported to have occurred shortly before company news updates. The articles also compared returns by executives who traded irregularly against those who followed a consistent pattern, and concluded that irregular trading resulted in greater gains. These articles have reignited interest in “best practices” for Rule 10b5-1 trading plans.

The Council of Institutional Investors (CII), a group of pension funds that oversees more than $3 trillion in assets, has picked up on the issue of potential misuse of Rule 10b5-1 trading plans and submitted a rulemaking petition to the SEC requesting interpretive guidance or amendments to Rule 10b5-1. [2] CII recommends that the SEC:

…continue reading: Getting Back to Basics with Rule 10b5-1 Trading Plans

In Business Roundtable v. SEC, the DC Court of Appeals struck down the proxy access rule giving certain shareholders access to the corporate proxy on the grounds that the SEC failed to adequately fulfill its requirement to consider the impact of new rules on “efficiency, competition, and capital formation.” The Court offered a blistering critique of the SEC’s economic analysis in the rule. Criticism of the opinion followed and also led to a series of Congressional hearings on the SEC’s process for weighing the economic costs and benefits of new rules. Many of the critics of the opinion, and indeed of cost-benefit analysis itself, have argued that it is simply too difficult to guide rulemaking, or that costs are easier to measure than benefits and so the approach trends against the status quo.

I counter that critique of Business Roundtable by way of example in an article co-authored with Thomas Stratmann in the Stanford University Law Review, Does Shareholder Proxy Access Damage Share Value in Small Publicly Traded Companies? We suggest a question the SEC might itself have investigated about its approach, if it had submitted a rule proposal first and if it was committed to economic analysis of its rules. We consider a natural experiment provided by the rule’s differential impact on small and large firms above and below the arbitrary $75 million market capitalization separation. We measure the impact of the market’s frustrated expectation of a permanent exemption for small firms, an expectation stemming from prior SEC implementation of other controversial rules and strong language in the Dodd-Frank Act, against a control group represented by large firms who expected application of the rule and for whom the new rule’s impact was largely capitalized into their value.

…continue reading: Shareholder Proxy Access in Small Publicly Traded Companies

The NASDAQ Stock Market LLC (Nasdaq) recently filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) a proposed rule [1] requiring listed companies to establish and maintain an internal audit function. [2] The SEC is soliciting comments on the proposed rule through March 29, 2013. [3]

Under the proposed rule, the internal audit function would be required to provide management and the audit committee with ongoing assessments of the company’s risk management processes and system of internal control. In addition, new Rule 5645 would require the audit committee to:

• meet periodically with the company’s internal auditors (or other personnel responsible for this function); and
• discuss with the outside auditors the responsibilities, budget, and staffing of the company’s internal audit function.

Companies would be permitted to outsource their internal audit function to a third-party service provider other than their independent auditor. For companies that choose to outsource this function, Nasdaq has stated that the company’s audit committee maintains sole responsibility to oversee the internal audit function and may not allocate or delegate this responsibility to another board committee.

According to Nasdaq, the proposed rule is designed to:

…continue reading: Proposed NASDAQ Rule Requires Internal Audit Function at Listed Companies

NYSE Euronext, the Society of Corporate Secretaries and Governance Professionals and the National Investor Relations Institute have jointly filed a rulemaking petition with the SEC, seeking prompt updating to the reporting rules under Section 13(f) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as well as supporting a more comprehensive study of the beneficial ownership reporting rules under Section 13. The petitioners urge the SEC to shorten the reporting deadline under Rule 13f-1 from 45 days to two business days after the relevant calendar quarter, and also suggests amending Section 13(f) itself to provide for reporting on at least a monthly, rather than quarterly, basis, to correspond with Dodd-Frank’s mandate for at least monthly disclosure of short sales. We applaud the petitioners for urging the SEC to modernize Section 13’s reporting rules, both with respect to Section 13(f) and more generally.

…continue reading: Rulemaking Petition Calls for Modernization of Section 13 Reporting Rules

On November 13, 2012, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), faced with a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that has been deadlocked over whether or how to address concerns about money market funds (MMFs), voted unanimously to propose three MMF reforms. The vote was the FSOC’s first exercise of its power under section 120 of the Dodd-Frank Act to recommend heightened regulatory standards to financial regulatory agencies. If finalized, today’s proposal will result in a recommendation that the SEC act on at least one of the reforms. [1]

Last August, SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro, in a controversial decision, tabled proposed rulemaking on MMFs because of the lack of support from three Commissioners of the SEC. In a letter sent in late September, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urged the FSOC members at their November meeting to take up MMF reform through their section 120 powers. According to Secretary Geithner at today’s meeting, the FSOC’s decision was taken on the recommendation of Chairman Schapiro.

The proposal from the FSOC presents three options for MMF reform, two of which were before the SEC in August, and requests public comment during the 60 days following publication of the proposal in the Federal Register. The FSOC does not regard the three options as mutually exclusive and thus could recommend more than one to the SEC. The three options are as follows:

…continue reading: Money Market Funds: FSOC Proposes Reforms

The Securities and Exchange Commission has suffered a number of recent setbacks in areas ranging from enforcement policy to rulemaking. One of the most serious was the DC Circuit’s 2011 decision in Business Roundtable v. SEC, in which the court invalidated the SEC’s proxy access rule, Rule 14a-11, on the basis that the SEC had failed to conduct an adequate cost-benefit analysis. By imposing an onerous, and possibly insurmountable procedural burden, the decision threatens to paralyze rulemaking by the SEC and other administrative agencies. The effect is particularly troubling in light of the heavy rulemaking obligations imposed by Dodd-Frank and the JOBS Act.

In my article, The Long Road Back: Business Roundtable and the Future of SEC Rulemaking (forthcoming in Seattle University Law Review), I critically evaluate the Business Roundtable decision. Specifically, I argue that, although Rule 14a-11 suffered from a number of flaws, flaws I have noted in other work (see Fisch, The Destructive Ambiguity of Federal Proxy Access, 61 Emory L. J. 435 (2012)), the deficiencies in SEC’s rule-making that led to the adoption of Rule 14a-11 cannot accurately be ascribed to inadequate economic analysis. Nor is the demanding standard imposed by DC Circuit’s decision a product of the statutory constraints on SEC rulemaking. Rather it stems from the court’s skepticism about proxy access and the SEC’s policymaking generally.

The SEC’s inability to defend its proxy access rule against attack was, in part, a product of two important constraints on its policy formation – the notice and comment requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act and the Government in the Sunshine Act. Although commentators have defended both these requirements in terms of transparency and democratic values, they sacrifice consensus building as well as decision-making efficiency, and they allow for the increased influence of political forces and interest groups. These sacrifices are of particular concern in the context of SEC rulemaking and, I argue, were at the heart of a problematic Rule 14a-11.

…continue reading: Business Roundtable and the Future of SEC Rulemaking

I would like to talk about economic analysis in support of Commission rulemakings, and, in particular, the role of economists from the Division of Risk, Strategy, and Financial Innovation (or “RSFI”) and the recently issued guidance on economic analysis.

Background on the Division of Risk, Strategy, and Financial Innovation

Without going into a description of the history of RSFI — which would not take long in any event, as the Division is only three years old — it may be useful to set the stage for how, in my mind, the Division fits into the overall structure of the Commission.

First, who are we? Often referred to as the SEC’s “think tank,” RSFI consists of highly trained staff from a variety of academic disciplines with a deep knowledge of the financial industry and markets. For example, we currently have over 35 PhD financial economists on staff, and hope to hire more this fall. We also have statisticians, financial engineers, programmers, MBAs, and other experts, including individuals with decades of relevant industry experience.

…continue reading: The Expanded Role of Economists in SEC Rulemaking

This posting, the October 2012 Davis Polk Dodd-Frank Progress Report, is one in a series of Davis Polk presentations that illustrate graphically the progress of the rulemaking work that has been done and is yet to occur under the Dodd-Frank Act. The Progress Report has been prepared using data from the Davis Polk Regulatory Tracker™, an online subscription service offered by Davis Polk to help market participants understand the Dodd-Frank Act and follow regulatory developments on a real-time basis.

In this report:

• As of October 1, 2012, a total of 237 Dodd-Frank rulemaking requirement deadlines have passed. Of these 237 passed deadlines, 149 (62.9%) have been missed and 88 (37.1%) have been met with finalized rules.
• In addition, 127 (31.9%) of the 398 total required rulemakings have been finalized, while 136 (34.2%) rulemaking requirements have not yet been proposed.
• This month, the CFTC Final Rule on Position Limits was vacated in a decision of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.