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US Treasury releases next report on principles of financial regulation

Chris Hamblin, Editor, London, 12 October 2017

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The US Department of the Treasury has come up with plans to streamline and reform the US regulatory system for the capital markets. One proposal is to raise the cap for crowdfuding.

The Treasury’s evaluation of current capital market regulations was done in response to President Trump's Executive Order 13772 of 3rd February, which  calls on the department to earmark laws and regulations that clash with the president's "core principles of financial regulation."
 
Steven Mnuchin, the head of the Treasury, is keen to speed up US economic growth and capital formation and sees these reforms as essential for that purpose. According to the report, the number of publicly traded companies in the United States has almost halved over the last 20 years. In the report, the Treasury proposes to streamline disclosure requirements to reduce costs for companies while still providing investors with the information they need to make informed decisions about investments. It also wants to tailor its rules about disclosure and other requirements for companies that are going public according to their size and to 're-examining' the JOBS Act.

The report euphorically states that the world is in a 'post-crisis' situation. It goes on to say that the reforms of the Obama administration went too far in penalising the securitisation process relative to alternative, often more traditional, funding sources such as bank deposits and that this has made securitisation less attractive, exposing HNW and other retail consumers to harm. In its review of the securitization market, the Treasury found that "expanded disclosure requirements, while an important post-crisis reform, are unnecessarily burdensome and could be more appropriately tailored."

The Treasury is now on the look-out for 'regulatory overlaps' and ways of standardising the rules of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Trading and Futures Commission; beefing up economic analysis of, and public participation in, the rulemaking process in order to make its inner workings more publicly visible; and opening up private markets to more investors through proposals to facilitate pooled investments in private or less liquid offerings, and revisit the definition of an “accredited investor”; limiting the imposition of new regulations through informal guidance, no-action letters or interpretation, instead of through notice and comment rulemaking; and a review of the worth of self-regulatory organizations (SROs), with recommendations for improvements.

In looking at the derivatives market, the Treasury thought that there was a need for more standardised SEC and CFTC rules and a resolution of "cross-border frictions that fragment global markets."
 
The report also recommendes improvements in the way that regulators oversee financial market utilities (FMUs), with an eye on the avoidance of taxpayer-funded bailouts; repeal for ss1502, 1503, 1504 and 953(b) Dodd-Frank Act; a look at reducing the cost of securities litigation for issuers with the goal of protecting all investors’ rights and interests; higher amounts to be raised in a crowdfunding offering - going from US$1 million to $5 million; and a look at Basel III capital standards to do with the derivatives market.

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