SEC commissioner Hester Peirce: ‘There’s a real desire for change in the market’ 

​Nowhere else in the world is the primary financial regulator so dominated by personality and politics. Despite all the checks and balances, the leadership of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has an inevitable impact on the direction and sentiment of institutional investment. For the past four years, that influence has been wielded by former chair Gary Gensler: known for his rigorous enforcement approach, his conservative crypto stance and his aggressive overhaul of micro market structure.But with Donald Trump back in the White House, the incoming chairman looks set to have a very different stance. Paul Atkins’ pro-markets, pro-business nomination has been greeted with optimism by the Street. How will this translate into policy?
The fine print
The SEC consists of five commissioners, no more than three from the same party. After Gensler’s resignation on January 20, along with the surprise departure of Democrat Jaime Lizárraga in November, the agency stands two short. Congress is (as of February 5) yet to confirm Atkins’ nomination, while Democrat minority leader Chuck Schumer has reportedly put forward Democrat party heavyweight – and former presidential nominee – Elizabeth Warren. Until then, the agency is running on a skeleton crew – acting chairman Mark Uyeda (Republican), commissioner Caroline A Crenshaw (Democrat) and Peirce (Republican)The longest-serving commissioner on the board, and the newly appointed head of the recently established crypto task force, Peirce joined the SEC in 2018 under Trump’s first presidency and is perceived as one of SEC’s safest pairs of hands.
The public pipeline
While ‘deregulation’ is the word on everyone’s lips, Peirce is cautious, highlighting the importance of context. “It’s more about looking at the rule book and seeing whether those rules are working as intended,” she says, noting how at times they are not solving the problems they were intended for.A focus on improving capital markets is going to be core to this approach – and Atkins has already staked out his stance on this, noting on a recent podcast that the SEC is there to “enable markets to flourish … if it helps to bring down costs for investors and for people who are trying to raise capital. That’s the reason why we have financial markets … to have capital find its way to businesses.”I want people to come in and work through the hard problems with us. I want the door to open a little widerHester Peirce, SECPeirce echoes this. “Capital formation has not received a lot of attention recently, and I suspect it will be an area people want to focus on,” she says. “Why do we have so few public companies now?”While the US may not be facing the same challenges as Europe when it comes to primary liquidity, it has its own hurdles to listing that the SEC is keen to surmount.“There are a lot of reasons why companies don’t go public, and some of those are SEC regulatory reasons,” ad