More than 40 organizations are urging the reconfirmation of Caroline Crenshaw for another term at the Securities and Exchange Commission. The presence of principled voices such as Crenshaw’s at the SEC is absolutely critical, especially when the incoming Trump administration has signaled its intent to break from the tradition of selecting candidates on a bipartisan basis.
While the crypto industry is hoping for a more friendly regulatory environment, Mark Hays, associate director for cryptocurrency and financial technology at watchdog group Americans for Financial Reform, warned that there are risks from this.
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) finalized two proposals that would bring much-needed transparency to the audit industry to the benefit of investors and the broader public, for example, by requiring disclosure of partner and manager involvement, workload, and other details of individual audit engagements and firm-wide metrics.
Cryptocurrency promises a high-tech opportunity to make buckets of money, but like most get-rich-quick schemes, rip-offs are ubiquitous. The crypto industry is rife with scams, hustles akin to stock swindles, cyberbreaches, and other crimes that can easily separate investors and consumers from their money.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved a new standard from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) that clarifies the “General Responsibilities” of an auditor in conducting a public company audit. AFREF and Public Citizen submitted a comment to the PCAOB on the proposed standard.
Today, a coalition of public interest organizations filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit defending the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against challenges to its final rule requiring public companies to disclose climate-related risks to their businesses and plans to manage or mitigate them. The SEC rule aligns with the growing consensus among investors and financial regulators in the U.S. and around the world that climate change poses significant risks to financial systems, and that securities regulators have an important role to play in mitigating those risks.
The cryptocurrency industry’s lobbying efforts and hundreds of millions in campaign spending failed to generate enough congressional support to override President Biden’s veto of the Republican House’s effort to roll back Securities and Exchange Commission guidance designed to reduce the risks crypto assets can pose to investors and the market. Consumer protection advocates welcomed the vote as a good outcome for investor protection.
AFR and coalition members signed onto a letter urging the Senate to support the nomination of Caroline A. Crenshaw to Serve as a Commissioner of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for another term. Commissioner Crenshaw was unanimously confirmed in 2020 and her distinguished service at the SEC fully justified this Senate support. Crenshaw has worked tirelessly and skillfully with all stakeholders to advance the mission of the SEC.
Today’s ruling by the Supreme Court curbing the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) ability to hear complicated cases in front of expert administrative judges will drive litigation into the federal courts where companies and lobbyists will be able to, as they increasingly do, shop around for a pro-industry judge. Today’s 6-3 Supreme Court ruling in SEC v. Jarkesy now gives businesses and wrongdoers more Constitutional rights than most consumers and employees in America and sets a bad precedent by chipping away at an agency’s ability to meaningfully hold corporations accountable.
By staying the private fund disclosure rule written by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Fifth Circuit has given a victory to extraordinarily wealthy predatory financiers and opened the door to undermining the agency’s basic regulatory tools. Stopping the SEC’s private funds rule, which would increase transparency and accountability in the multi-trillion-dollar private funds market, is a terrible outcome in and of itself. But the impacts of this ruling go much further.