SEC chair taps four new PCAOB members

SEC chair Paul Atkins has decided to sweep the board.

In a much-anticipated move, the SEC announced on January 30 the appointment of four new members to the PCAOB, replacing Kara Stein, whose term was set to expire in October of this year; Anthony Thompson, whose term was up in October 2027; and Christina Ho, who announced her resignation in December 2025. Acting chair George Botic will remain on the audit board as a member.

Demetrios (“Jim”) Logothetis, a retired EY partner with 40 years’ experience, will serve as PCAOB chair. The other new board members include two men who already hold roles in the Trump administration: economist Mark Calabria, who is associate director and chief statistician with the US Office of Management and Budget and senior advisor to the office of the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; and Kyle Hauptman, chair of the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA).

Attorney Steven Laughton, who was Christina Ho’s board counsel, is the other new PCAOB member.

Board games. Firing PCAOB members is almost “a rite of passage for each new SEC chair,” AuditBoard senior advisor Richard Chambers, former president and CEO of the Institute of Internal Auditors, told CFO Brew.

Gary Gensler, who was SEC chair under President Joe Biden, and Jay Clayton, who was chair during President Donald Trump’s first term, each opted to replace all the PCAOB members appointed by their predecessors. In 2025, Atkins telegraphed that he would do the same by requesting the resignation of PCAOB chair Erica Williams and posting job openings for the other board seats.

New board, lighter touch? Chambers said the new board seems up to snuff. “I was surprised, and I’d say probably pleasantly surprised, that the new leadership is so seasoned. They come from a variety of backgrounds, but they clearly complement each other,” he said, “and so from that standpoint, I think you can expect a very disciplined and responsible approach to regulation coming out of the PCAOB.”

As SEC chair, Atkins has taken a deregulatory stance. The PCAOB he’s installed may lean in that direction as well. Hauptman, for instance, has emphasized deregulation in his approach to running the NCUA. In testimony before the House Financial Services Committee in December 2025, he stated that the NCUA was “carefully reviewing its regulations to remove any that are obsolete, overly prescriptive, or unduly burdensome.”

Chambers expects the new board to be less assertive than during Williams’s tenure, when it adopted and amended several new regulations and levied record-high fines. The revamped PCAOB “doesn’t look like it’s going to be a board that’s going to go in with a very aggressive regulatory agenda, putting new rules in place,” he said, adding that any rulemaking it does will likely focus on making the compliance process less burdensome.

Chambers also predicts that the new board won’t take a “punitive approach” toward enforcement, though he cautions firms not to become complacent. “If I were a firm, I wouldn’t be breathing too big a sigh of relief at this point, until I get a better view of what exactly this board is going to bring,” he said.

CFOs, he suggested, should confirm that their external auditors are up-to-date with what’s going on with the PCAOB. It’s “prudent,” he said, for CFOs to “keep an eye…on what the regulatory philosophy might be of the PCAOB at any given point in time.”

Full plates. Calabria and Hauptman may have their hands full juggling their multiple roles. PCAOB members typically treat board service as a full-time job, Chambers said. “It’s not a board, in the sense of a corporate board where you just convene once a month,” he pointed out. “In some ways, you could almost describe it as a five-headed CEO in terms of how they oversee the day-to-day operations of the PCAOB.”

Hauptman’s term at the NCUA formally ended in August 2025. In a statement last week about his PCAOB appointment, he said that he’d remain NCUA chair until his successor is chosen and confirmed by the Senate.