Paul S. Atkins: speeches

1. The philosophy behind the agenda

Addressing a business club in Texas, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins says the agency is going back to founding ideas of individual freedom, competition and limited central control. He argues the regulator drifted: rules served political and social goals, enforcement hurt innovators more than wrongdoers, disclosure was bent toward what officials found interesting, and uncertainty over digital assets pushed founders and investors offshore, into markets with weaker safeguards. His aim is American markets that stay deep, competitive and innovative, with strong investor protection and disclosure tied to materiality.

2. Reviving public markets

The centrepiece is a plan to bring back initial public offerings, since the number of listed firms has fallen for decades and the burden of being public has become heavy. Proposals let companies report twice a year instead of four times, overhaul registered offerings and filer categories so obligations match size and maturity, and withdraw the earlier climate disclosure rule. He reports that more than 580 firms listed from early 2025 to mid-2026, up 75% on the previous period, raising $208 billion, with 47 listings in Texas, over a tenth of the national total.

3. Digital assets

Under Project Crypto the agency now says most crypto assets are not securities in themselves, so issuers and buyers can know the status before acting rather than learning it from enforcement cases. An August proposal, Regulation Crypto Assets, would create tailored routes to raise capital, and an innovation exemption would allow on-chain trading of tokenised securities within a supervised framework, with more to come.

4. Governance and Texas

He wants to repeal Rule 14a-8 so states, not the SEC, decide what shareholders may vote on, arguing the federal role since 1942 lacked authority and that competition among states will improve outcomes. Texas, with lower public-company costs, a new business court, headquarters moves, reincorporations by well-known firms and its own stock exchange, is held up as the model, and he closes by calling the reforms a homecoming to first principles.

1. A race for crypto leadership

Addressing a Solana Policy Institute summit in Washington, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins framed the moment as a choice between building the future of finance in America or ceding it abroad. He presented the agency's Project Crypto as a rule-by-rule effort to make the country the world's crypto capital, and urged Congress to pass the CLARITY Act, adding that the administration will act with or without it.

2. Three proposals

First, the proposed Regulation Crypto Assets would let founders raise money using digital assets under clear securities rules; the main feedback asks when an investment contract ends once promised work is done. Second, transfer-agent rules left untouched for about forty years, written for paper certificates, are proposed for modernisation toward tokenised shares. Third, staff are drafting a proposal that would let advisers and regulated funds hold crypto, including self-custody where no qualified custodian exists and through state trust companies.

3. One architecture and a warning

Atkins presents these as three pillars of one framework covering the whole life of a digital asset: its creation, its trading, its transfer and its safekeeping. Citing a Jefferson line about institutions keeping pace with the times, he warned that failing to adapt would send blockchain finance's best advances overseas, and promised clarity while staying within the SEC's statutory mission.

1. First principles and a lighter disclosure regime

Speaking in Nashville to corporate governance professionals just after the nation's 250th anniversary, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said the founders built a limited framework, a trellis rather than a cage, and that US markets recovered from crises by returning to first principles, as the 1933 Securities Act did by relying on honest information rather than regulators' judgment. With the number of public companies down about 40% in recent decades, he argued the SEC should go back to its foundation, disclosure of material information, because accumulated rulemaking has produced piles of paperwork that obscure more than they reveal and cost companies fees and management time. He cited a justice's warning that burying shareholders in trivial information does not help informed decisions.

2. Materiality and Regulation S-K

He said materiality, which the Supreme Court ties to what a reasonable investor would find important, is rooted in financial returns, and that terms like double materiality or decision-useful have no legal footing, with the disclosure framework having been bent toward social and political agendas. In January the SEC asked for feedback on reforming Regulation S-K and received over 100 letters. Some suggest a materiality overlay letting firms omit line items that are not material, which could support a principles-based regime. Some commenters would exempt items such as executive pay, and market forces would still bring out other information investors want, as non-GAAP measures and tailored performance indicators already show; the aim is the minimum effective dose of regulation. But it only works if companies use their discretion: he criticised copying peers' disclosures and called the resulting spiral self-defeating, saying responsibility for the volume and clarity of filings rests with companies.

3. Shareholder proposals

On Rule 14a-8, the staff declined to respond to no-action requests this season, and predictions of chaos did not occur: omission rates stayed similar to last year, only six lawsuits arose, proxy advisers rarely objected and investors reported more direct engagement. He concluded the staff's role as go-between is unnecessary and costly, comparing it to training wheels, and that companies can judge exclusions themselves. The SEC is also reviewing the rule itself, in light of federalism and state corporate law, with the view that the agency's power to make rules in the public interest is not unlimited. He urged that annual meetings not become forums for debates unrelated to investors' financial returns, called on states to keep corporate law from politicising meetings, Companies, he noted, had feared lawsuits and proxy-adviser penalties for excluding proposals, yet one suit was won by the company and three were settled. Recalling his 2008 farewell speech as a commissioner, he noted that the rule may encroach on state law governing shareholder relations, and that amendments since 1942 added complexity without asking what the federal role should be. He also warned of the tyranny of the minority: one individual was lead proponent on about 41% of proposals voted on, of which only 8% won majority support. He closed by saying market strength comes from founding principles, not from expanded government reach: reforming disclosure and rethinking shareholder proposals are, in his words, two expressions of the same resolve to let enterprise flourish without needless friction and let capital flow to its best use.

1. The founding idea and the framework around it

Addressing the New York economic club days before the 250th anniversary of the Republic, SEC Chairman Paul Atkins linked Jefferson's declaration and Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, both from 1776, as expressions of one conviction: individuals should be trusted ahead of institutions. Jefferson owned a well-worn copy of Smith's book, and the founders' debates echoed Smith's themes: a government large enough to protect people but too small to shackle them. The founders, he said, knew the invisible hand would not preserve itself, so they built a light framework of clear rights, coherent rules and bounded public authority, more trellis than cage, along which prosperity could climb, producing the world's most prosperous and resilient capital markets. He asked whether today's stewards have the wisdom and restraint to preserve it.

2. Two and a half centuries of markets

He traced American enterprise from Tocqueville's praise of its spirit and Washington's view of commerce, through the 1792 buttonwood agreement among stockbrokers, nineteenth-century growth of New York, widening share ownership, the postwar boom and the 1980s return to limited government. Every crisis threatened US markets, he argued, but none broke them, because the bedrock of free enterprise held and Americans returned to first principles; the 1933 securities law aimed to preserve markets by restoring trust through transparency rather than replacing investors' judgment. He quoted Washington's remark that a commercially minded people can achieve almost anything and a former SEC chairman's point that prosperity has to be created before anyone can distribute it, and the Tocqueville idea that Americans are instinctively enterprising and generous. He cited de Soto on formal property systems and contrasted collectivist experiments that ended in poverty with a system that rewards risk and innovation, noting foreign World Cup visitors surprised by everyday American life, and warned that some local leaders now speak the language of control.

3. The SEC's ACT strategy

He said recent regulation drifted: rules served social goals, enforcement became a policy tool, disclosure was redirected toward what regulators found interesting, and digital-asset uncertainty pushed innovation overseas. The SEC's response is a three-part ACT strategy. Advance: Project Crypto modernises rules to let markets move on-chain and gives issuers certainty about when an asset is a security. Clarify: the SEC and the CFTC signed a memorandum aligning definitions and coordinating oversight, ending a gap in oversight between the two agencies. Transform: with listed companies down about 40% since the 1990s, the agency is proposing offering and filer-status reforms to scale disclosure to company size and maturity, and has proposed rescinding the prior climate disclosure rule, re-tying the rulebook to materiality. Initial submissions for traditional IPOs rose 70% from January to early June against 2024, and one June offering raised 85.7 billion dollars.

4. Children's accounts, enforcement and a closing image

He highlighted Trump Accounts, opening on 4 July for every child under 18: an IRA in the child's name, with family, friends and employers able to give up to 5 000 dollars a year, philanthropic top-ups for many low- and middle-income children and a one-time 1 000 dollars from the government for those born between 2025 and 2028; the SEC supports it through investor education. On enforcement, the agency has abandoned regulation by enforcement, prioritising fraud, manipulation and abuses of trust over case counts and record penalties, and plans a broad review of enforcement processes, only the second in its history. He closed by saying the task is not to uproot what predecessors built but to tend the trellis and safeguard the invisible hand, as regulators, builders, risk-takers and citizens, so that the Republic's promise lasts another quarter millennium. He also mentioned that foreign fans at the football tournament were praising everyday American life, from air conditioning to barbecue, as a present-day echo of Tocqueville, and noted that some local politicians in the city were speaking the language of control and warned that the same collapse followed every collectivist experiment.

1. Reagan's legacy

Speaking at the Reagan National Economic Forum in Simi Valley, the SEC Chairman, stressing that his views were personal, paid tribute to Ronald Reagan as the United States nears its 250th anniversary. He recalled the economic revival he witnessed as a young lawyer in New York in the 1980s and Reagan's faith in the market, which he credited with spreading free enterprise beyond the Iron Curtain and contributing to the fall of communism. Markets, he argued, need rules clear enough to guide but limited enough not to stifle. He joked that, after three periods at the agency, he finds a proposal for yet another disclosure obligation as frightening as Reagan found an official offering help.

2. A regulator that became an obstacle

Congress gives the SEC three linked goals: protecting investors, keeping markets fair and efficient, and helping companies raise capital. In his view, previous commissions piled on disclosure duties unrelated to these aims and to the reasonable investor standard, making listings costly, litigious and politicised. Between 1994 and his return as Chairman, the number of US-listed companies fell by about 40%. Hostility toward digital assets drove innovators abroad, treating the technology rather than bad actors as the problem.

3. The new agenda

Following the administration's goal of making the country the leading crypto hub, the SEC launched Project Crypto, now shared with the CFTC, to modernise rules for on-chain markets, clarified which digital assets are securities and is preparing an exemption for tokenised listed shares and guidance for on-chain trading systems. He and the CFTC chairman are working to end overlapping oversight between the two agencies. To revive initial public offerings, the SEC has proposed letting companies report quarterly or every six months, recalibrating disclosure and easing access to markets, and on the day of the speech it proposed withdrawing the previous climate disclosure rule, arguing that the agency must serve all investors rather than particular political goals. He presented harmonisation with the CFTC as turning a zone of unclear jurisdiction into fertile ground for new businesses, and said the agency is acting with both rigour and restraint across its whole mandate.

4. Conclusion

He described these steps as a beginning. Recalling the jobs and lower inflation of the Reagan years, he said the question is not whether Americans can build new prosperity but whether regulators are willing to let them, and voiced confidence that the agency will keep American markets strong for the coming 250 years. He closed by quoting Reagan's call, made at the same library, for a new beginning for citizens not yet sharing in prosperity.