Believe it or not the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act was signed into law on April 5, 2012. A great example of how the legislators, working with an administrative agency, can bring meaningful and substantive positive change. Enacted in the heat of a Congressional...
If you don't know what the headline means, maybe just skip this one. Otherwise read on! Last week, the SEC approved a rule change that shortens the typical settlement period for public trading through brokers (known as "T+" for "trading plus") to two business days...
A number of liberal groups filed a lawsuit today to challenge Pres. Trump's January 30 executive order that for every new regulation an agency must eliminate two old regulations. The lawsuit says it requires agencies to be "arbitrary," which they would not be allowed to...
The Trump team just announced that they are going to nominate Jay Clayton of Sullivan & Cromwell to be the next Chairman of the SEC. Clayton is a prominent M&A attorney and dealmaker. Very different from the former prosecutor with no real securities experience who...
As expected, in one of his final acts in office a few weeks ago, Pres. Obama signed the SEC Small Business Advocate Act of 2016 into law. This bill had pretty wide bipartisan support in Congress. Like most good ideas, it's pretty simple. It sets...
First, happy new year to my faithful blogees! As President-elect Trump has been organizing his proposed Cabinet, we haven't heard much yet about appointments to administrative agencies such as the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trump gets to appoint three open SEC commissioner spots out of five....
Following up on positive statements by senior SEC staffers at the recent PLI Securities Law seminar and the SEC small business forum in November, the Commission also recently issued a white paper on how things are going under updated Regulation A, now known as Regulation...
I was honored Thursday to speak on a panel at the SEC's annual small business capital formation forum. I also co-moderated a breakout session developing recommendations to improve regulation of smaller reporting companies. My talk on the panel provided an update on Regulation A+ and...
As the fallout from the election of President-elect Donald Trump continues, Obama-appointed SEC Chair Mary Jo White announced yesterday that she will leave the SEC when Obama leaves office, though her term doesn't end until 2019. Chair White is an independent and while she has...
Today I'm attending the Practising Law Institute's Securities Regulation Institute, the annual educational gathering of mostly big law firm securities lawyers. Keith Higgins, the SEC's very capable head of Corporation Finance, disclosed some interesting stats on how Regulation A+ is going. So far, since the new...