Paul Atkins plans to ‘future-proof’ his deregulatory agenda at the SEC

SEC Chair Paul Atkins says he doesn’t want the SEC to undergo policy shifts in future administrations (guided by a less deregulatory philosophy than his).

“We can’t have a ping-ponging back and forth,” Atkins, the Trump-appointed SEC chair, said at a recent event hosted by the Managed Funds Association (MFA), a trade group representing alternative asset managers. “That doesn’t do anyone any good.”

His comments were in response to a question from Bryan Corbett, president and CEO of MFA, who said that each new presidential administration creates “significant swings” in regulatory priorities, and that “makes it very hard for businesses to plan [and] to spend on the right systems.”

The nonprofit advocacy group Better Markets slammed President Donald Trump’s nomination of Atkins to head up the agency earlier this year. Dennis Kelleher, Better Markets’ president and CEO, said in a March statement that Atkins “has a remarkably long and disreputable record of being vigorously if not adamantly opposed to the very reasons the SEC exists.”

At the MFA event on Oct. 7, Atkins said he plans to “future-proof” his deregulatory agenda, in part by implementing new rules “early enough.” This would give the private sector time to implement required changes, he claimed, and make the rules harder to repeal or change under future administrations.

He also said that recent and pending court decisions will help further define and limit the agency’s authority. Atkins pointed to one such recent ruling from the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which “require[d] the SEC to assess the costs and benefits” of a Biden-era rule on short-selling, as well as another case pending in the Eighth Circuit involving the SEC’s climate-reporting rule, which the agency has indicated it would no longer defend.

At the MFA event, Atkins thanked the court system for its rulings so far and said, “I wish the Eighth Circuit would rule” on the climate disclosure case. However, the court last month said it was putting the case on pause until the SEC decides what it’s going to do with the regulation. SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw, currently the commission’s only Democrat, said in March that the SEC’s announcement that it would no longer defend the climate reporting rule was “bad governance.”

Atkins said, regarding the court decisions so far, “this builds up a really good judicial type of track record” by limiting regulatory agencies in ways he says “are extremely important.”