The chair of Wall Street’s watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Paul Atkins, addressed the negative impact of the government shutdown on markets and how he aims to "make IPOs great again" Monday on "The Claman Countdown."
"We cannot process these IPOs under the rules as they are…with this government shutdown," Atkins told FOX Business anchor Liz Claman.
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Tasked with greenlighting publicly-traded companies and catching market fraudsters, the SEC used to have more than 4,200 people on staff prior to the government shutdown. Now, less than 10% of staff remain, with fewer than 400 employees left to monitor markets.
Additionally, the SEC has around half the number of public companies as it had 30 years ago, the chair lamented.
However, Atkins explained the rule the SEC "dusted off" during the government shutdown, allowing two companies to become IPOs last week.
"It was the original way that Congress designed the Securities Act of 1933, which said, basically, you file your registration statement for your new securities offering, and you wait 20 days, and then you can go public and sell your securities," Atkins explained.
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The SEC chair said several companies are already taking advantage of this faster process.
"About 20 some companies had gone through a fair amount of rounds of comments with our staff," Atkins said. "And so we said you could pull your delaying amendment, as we call it, and go public after 20 days."
The SEC approved Maplight and Navon as IPOs under the rule, Atkins said, adding there "might be others" soon.
"I understand one may be tomorrow," he added.
When Claman asked how the SEC can ensure corporate malfeasance and other problems will still be caught in capital markets, Atkins replied that the rule helps only a small group of companies already ‘ready to go.’
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"They were in the final phase of comments," he said. "Hopefully, this whole shutdown nonsense will end very quickly so we can go back to work, scrutinize filings, and monitor markets as we normally do."
Describing his effort to "make IPOs great again," Atkins listed several factors inhibiting companies from going public.
He emphasized that a company’s risk-factor disclosures should not become "the single largest section" in its annual report.
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"We will accept companies going public that have bylaws providing for either mandatory arbitration, fee-shifting ‘loser pays’ provisions, or both," Atkins said.
