The SEC should increase the number of commissioners to seven from five and complete a comprehensive review and reorganization of its operations, a report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Center for Capital Markets Competitiveness recommends.
The center’s report, “U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission: A Roadmap for Transformational Reform,” contains a total of 28 recommendations, aimed at making “constructive reform proposals that, taken together, would help to achieve the level of change needed to transform the agency.”
Among the recommendations are:
- A deputy chairman for management and operations should be appointed to oversee a “comprehensive review and reorganization.”
- The division of enforcement should attempt to reduce its open-case inventory annually by “identifying one-third of its investigation that are least likely to warrant action.”
- Revamp how investigations are assigned.
- Increase the number of specialty units in the division of enforcement and increase the number of staff in those units.
The report also reiterated recommendations from the center’s 2009 report, which included urging the five-member commission to play a “greater ongoing role in the interpretation and application of regulatory policy.”
