Sarbox Redux

by StockJockey

Monday, February 05, 2007 - 4:33 pm

New York City Mayor Bloomberg might be in London talking his book, but Sarbox issues are likely to linger. This brief interview will shed more light on what one long-time SEC commissioner is thinking about a few hot buttons:

Investment News
Brooke Southall

February 5, 2007
SAN FRANCISCO — Paul Atkins, a member of the Securities and Exchange Commission, made a stop here to speak to the Pacific Research Institute, a conservative think tank based in San Francisco. Though the press was barred from the event, he took time last Monday to offer a glimpse of his views and those of the SEC.

Q. Will the SEC ever define an advisory standard to make the hubbub over the broker-dealer exemption rule irrelevant?

A. It’s very much on our minds. Some people probably say we should have done it long ago, but this is the course we charted. We have to be very cognizant of what our authority is and what Congress has instructed us to do, especially in light of the Goldstein decision [by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, overturning the SEC’s hedge fund adviser registration mandate].

Q. Is the turmoil over the backdating of options a big concern?

A. These things go back before Sarbanes-Oxley, so it’s really a thing of the past. Some [transgressions] are really ugly, and in other [instances], boards [of the accused companies] contend no harm, no foul.

Q. Does the Democrats’ control of Congress portend more-cumbersome regulation by the SEC?

A. Congress is Congress, and we are part of the executive branch. So I don’t think it’s dependent on that. Now that can change if Congress really decides to pass laws in our sphere and direct us accordingly, and the SEC will respond. If you look at this past legislative session, the SEC got slammed three times by Congress by wide majorities of both Republicans and Democrats, because we had not done what we should have done over the years.

Read more here

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Paul S. Atkins was appointed by President George W. Bush to be a commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 29, 2002. His term expires in 2008.
Paul S. Atkins was appointed by President George W. Bush to be a commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission on July 29, 2002. His term expires in 2008.

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