Paul Atkins, the recently appointed chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), supports President Trump’s position on publicly traded companies’ reporting requirements. In an editorial in today’s Financial Times, Atkins wrote, “…I am fast-tracking President Trump’s proposal to equip companies with the option to report on a semi-annual basis.”
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Atkins is a fan of allowing the market to determine the ideal reporting frequency for each company. He believes that a company’s industry, its size, and the expectations of investors, and not the SEC’s unbending rules, should direct the rate at which it reports. In contrast with his predecessor, Gary Gensler, Atkins would like to have the government provide “the minimum effective dose of regulation needed to protect investors while allowing businesses to flourish.”
Bolstering his argument, Atkins wrote that even though quarterly reporting was established in 1970, select companies still have the flexibility to use a different timetable. Furthermore, since the UK instituted semi-annual reporting in 2014, some UK-traded companies have still chosen to report quarterly.
While some investor advocacy groups have expressed concern that semi-annual reporting would diminish transparency, Atkins argues that the move would instead renew the focus on companies’ and investors’ interests.
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