Corporate Governance

Senator Grassley and SEC Oversight of Stock Exchanges

By JP Thibeault

In a February 1, 2008, press release, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) announced that the SEC will employ greater measures to fulfill its responsibility to police self-regulatory organizations, such as the New York Stock Exchange and other financial markets.

Grassley, who is the ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, issued his release in response to a new report on the SEC by the Government Accountability Office. The report focuses primarily on the SEC’s oversight of the various stock and options exchanges- investors’ first line of defense against market manipulation and insider trading. The report details how the commission has declined to use the audits in its oversight procedures despite that the internal audits conducted by the nation’s stock and options exchanges are the best tool that the SEC has in its battles against insider trading and market manipulation. Moreover, the report noted that the SEC investigators’ efforts to track questionable trading are hampered by a computer system that does not allow investigative referrals from the major exchanges to be searched easily and efficiently.

Grassley asked the SEC to explain why its staff has not routinely obtained and reviewed the internal audits and investigations of the organizations, and asked SEC Chairman Christopher Cox to remedy the Commission's failure to use such investigative resources provided by self-regulatory organizations as part of its work to safeguard the integrity of U.S. markets. While SEC guidance called for the organizations "to allow ‘on-site’ access to internal documents during SEC inspections," Grassley noted that this does not provide an adequate substitute. Rather, he explained that “reliance on self regulatory organizations, such as the major stock exchanges, to police their members can work effectively only if the operations of the self regulatory organizations are open and transparent." As such, Grassley urged Chairman Cox to ensure that SEC staff obtain and review internal self regulatory organization audit reports on a routine basis. "It took way too long, but now maybe the SEC is finally getting serious about its duty to oversee self-regulatory organizations,” Grassley said in the release.

Full post as published by The Race to the Bottom on February 28, 2008 (boomark / email).