SEC’s Uyeda expects slowdown in rulemaking after ‘ambitious’ Biden era

The interim chief of the Securities and Exchange Commission says he expects a slowdown in the Wall Street regulator’s rulemaking after three and a half “overly ambitious” years of pursuing market reforms. 

“The way I look at financial regulation is, we’re not a speedboat,” SEC Acting Chair Mark Uyeda said Thursday at the Wall Street Journal’s CFO Network Summit in New York. “Think of us as one of those really long, super-sized freighters. We may need to make course corrections, but you want to be very methodical, very thoughtful in how you change direction.”

Uyeda called out the breadth and the speed of SEC rulemaking under former Chair Gary Gensler, whose agenda included climate-risk disclosures, stock-trading reforms and crackdowns on crypto scofflaws.

President Donald Trump tapped Uyeda to serve as the agency’s interim head until the Senate confirms former SEC Commissioner Paul Atkins as the regulator’s chief. Uyeda had worked for Atkins while he served as a commissioner.

Less than two months into the temporary job, Uyeda has moved swiftly to leave his mark on the agency. The most notable change on his watch: the SEC’s 180-degree pivot on policing the crypto market, which experienced a series of high-profile meltdowns in 2022.

The regulator has dropped or paused at least 10 cases against crypto companies and has signaled that it would no longer pursue regulation by enforcement. Uyeda launched a task force to come up with clearer policies for the industry the day after Trump tapped him to lead the agency.

The agency also nixed controversial staff crypto accounting guidance, which Uyeda described as overstepping the normal procedures for writing U.S. accounting rules.

“We’ve had a long, established process for setting accounting rules,” he said Thursday.

The agency also has revamped a crypto-focused unit within its enforcement division, renaming it and expanding it to focus on cyber fraud and emerging technologies.

On the regulatory front, the SEC stopped defending Gensler’s signature climate-risk disclosure rules, which faced lawsuits from several states. The agency also made it easier for corporations to block votes on shareholder proposals and has exempted personal information from appearing in a Wall Street monitoring tool known as the consolidated audit trail.

The agency granted more time for hedge funds and banks to comply with new U.S. Treasury clearing requirements. The new rule is intended to help stave off financial shocks in the Treasuries market.

The policy changes at the SEC have rolled out while the Trump administration attempts to slash the size of the federal workforce. The agency has offered $50,000 incentives to eligible employees to resign or retire by April 4.