Paul Atkins is an excellent choice to lead the SEC

On Wednesday, the Senate confirmed Paul S. Atkins to serve as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). As I have stated before, Atkins is an excellent choice to serve in this position with a proven record of standing up for good policy during his previous tenure as an SEC commissioner.

As SEC Chair, Atkins will push for reforms to benefit retail investors seeking to build wealth and Main Street entrepreneurs looking to attract capital, just as he had done when he last served as commissioner and as an advocate in the private sector.

During his previous tenure at the SEC during the George W. Bush administration, Atkins argued forcefully that legitimate investors and entrepreneurs suffer when regulatory burdens take away from a company’s focus on shareholder return. One of his greatest successes was his persuasion of the SEC to stop levying large corporate fines that punish a company’s shareholders for the bad acts of individual executives, pointing out that such policies punish twice investor victims of executive malfeasance.

CEI’s late founder Fred Smith praised Atkins in 2008 for utilizing “his private-sector experience to provide a vital check on a large bureaucracy.” Smith predicted that Atkins “will continue to be an important voice on public policy.”

As I have written previously, since President Trump appointed SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda as Acting Chair just after the presidential inauguration, “the Trump administration SEC has been working rapidly to reverse the abuses of [Biden-appointed SEC Chair] Gary Gensler from literally day one,” particularly on cryptocurrency.

Having Atkins at the helm – with Uyeda and Commissioner Hester Peirce by his side – will further refocus the SEC on its statutory mission of protecting investors from fraud and deception and ensuring SEC regulations do not impede the advancement of American capital formation. My CEI colleagues and I look forward to working with the SEC to repeal the destructive red tape that exists at the SEC from the tenure of Gensler and other of Atkins’s predecessors