Sky Blog
Welcome to the penultimate day of the SEC’s 31st International Institute for Securities Market Growth and Development. Before I begin, as I am sure you anticipate based on what you have heard from many SEC speakers this week, my …
Good morning. Today is the sixth-year anniversary of the first-ever meeting of the Small Business Capital Formation Advisory Committee.[1] Since that initial meeting, I have followed the discussions and recommendations by this Committee from outside the agency. Now it …
Corporations play an increasingly active role in lobbying, with a growing focus on influencing government rulemaking. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, corporate lobbying expenditures at the federal level reached a record $3.7 billion in 2024, accounting for 86.3 …
Congress seems on its way to passing the first piece of federal crypto-regulation, the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins – or GENIUS – Act. The law would create a comprehensive regulatory framework for payment stablecoins, which are …
In 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued Wells notices to at least 13 crypto companies – several of which were decentralized finance (DeFi) platforms – including Uniswap Labs (Uniswap), the second largest decentralized exchange (DEX) by trading volume
On November 25, 2024, plaintiffs Sjunde AP-Fonden and The Cleveland Bakers And Teamsters Pension Fund (together “Plaintiffs”) moved Judge Jesse Furman of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (the “Court”) for preliminary approval of a …
On April 4, 2025, a federal district court in Colorado dismissed a Section 11 claim arising out of a direct listing and concluded that recent Supreme Court precedent “likely forecloses Section 11 liability in the direct listing context” altogether. The …
The SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance has announced improvements to its policies for draft registration statements that will be welcomed by both companies and underwriters.
Following recent statements by Acting SEC Chair Mark Uyeda calling for a return to the …
Over recent decades, the massive globalization of finance has led many observers to expect widespread harmonization of nations’ financial regulations. Yet, while there has been a remarkable degree of harmonization in some areas, at least at the regional level, considerable …
On April 4, 2025, the staff of the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance (the “Staff”) issued a statement addressing the status of certain stablecoins under the U.S. securities laws.
The statement concludes that a narrow class of USD-backed, fully reserved, …
Good morning and welcome to the annual conference on federal and state securities cooperation, organized jointly by the North American Securities Administrators Association (“NASAA”) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC” or “Commission”).[1] Inside the SEC, this gathering …
Firms often face a free-rider problem when competitors learn about and implement the firms’ innovations without bearing the costs of development, a phenomenon known as knowledge spillovers. As recent empirical evidence shows, this causes substantial underinvestment in research and development …
In an earlier post, I discussed my paper arguing that significant changes to the corporate-disclosure regime should trigger review of aspects of the securities-fraud regime. This is because the disclosure regime and the securities-fraud regime go hand-in-hand. So if …
On February 12, President Trump issued an Executive Order and Fact Sheet ordering, among other things, that the U.S. Attorney General cease initiation of any new FCPA investigations or enforcement actions for 180 days. As CEOs and boards of …
In a recent study, we examine how political ideology affected SEC commissioners’ stances on whether to adopt the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Our findings reveal a partisan divide that stalled decision-making and left the U.S. as an outlier in …
Today [March 27], the SEC purports to walk away from the Climate-Related Disclosures Rule.[1] In building the rule, we journeyed up a mountain. The Commission spent at least four years taking input – we issued requests for information, made …
In a new article, we focus on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement of the CEO and CFO certification requirement pursuant to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). The article analyzes the appropriate interpretation of the statute’s reach, the SEC enforcement proceedings …