by Cydney Posner
The SEC has announced that Chair Mary Jo White intends to resign at the end of President Obama’s term. One of the longest serving chairs, she has served for almost four years. In addition to a long list of accomplishments, including over 50 significant rulemaking initiatives while acting as chair, White is credited in the press release with “completing the vast majority of the agency’s mandates under the Dodd-Frank Act and all of its mandates under the JOBS Act….” She also implemented the first policy to require admissions of wrongdoing, where appropriate, in connection with SEC settlements. But she also took a lot of heat from some progressives, who accused her of lax enforcement and more specifically, refusing to adopt rules requring political spending disclosure. (See, e.g., this article in the WSJ and this PubCo post.)
Her departure was not unexpected (unless, that is, you were relying on this Bloomberg article, published just before the election, reporting that White had “privately told agency officials that people with ties to both the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump campaigns have asked if she would consider staying on to give the next president time to pick a successor, said people familiar with the matter. White said she expects any holdover to be brief….”) White’s exit will, according to the Washington Post, clear “the way for President-elect Donald Trump to reshape the way Wall Street is regulated…. Trump has already indicated he would usher in a period of deregulation, including dismantling 2010’s financial reform legislation, known as the Dodd Frank Act. He appointed Paul Atkins, an industry veteran, who has called Dodd Frank a “calamity,” to lead the agency’s transition.”
