Securities Regulation Daily Wrap Up, EXCHANGES AND MARKET REGULATION—SEC publishes ambitious rulemaking agenda, (Jul 7, 2026)
The new regulatory agenda grows by at least 10 items, accounting for some already implemented or dropped, to encompass a wide-ranging set of proposed reforms.
The SEC’s latest regulatory agenda drops a few items, such as the now-final joint SEC-CFTC standards under the Financial Data Transparency Act of 2022, but includes numerous topics ranging from registered offerings reform to crypto to expanding retail investors’ access to private markets. Overall, the SEC’s regulatory agenda swelled from 23 items to a total of 38, of which all but two pre-rule items are now at the proposed rule stage. Most of the items on the agenda are slated for further action by October 2026, although action on a few items is expected in July 2026.
“Every IPO is an invitation to workers and savers to participate in the prosperity of the next generation of American enterprise,” said SEC Chair Paul S. Atkins regarding the proposed registration reforms. “When fewer companies go public, fewer investors receive that invitation. Guided by materiality, the proposed reforms aim to reduce compliance burdens and further facilitate capital formation in our public markets, while maintaining critical investor protections.”
Marquee items. The SEC appears poised to push for a set of big-ticket rulemakings on a range of topics, including registered offering reforms that would impact rules that guide companies from private status to publicly traded status. These rules were last overhauled in 2005. The current batch of reforms were proposed earlier this year.
Semiannual reporting, something called for by President Trump, has already been proposed and the comment period just closed. Depending on the nature of the comments, which are still being posted, the SEC could act quickly to implement the rule changes as proposed or it may need to tweak any final rules to accommodate potential hurdles to companies electing semiannual reporting status.
As proposed, the SEC would give companies the option to choose semiannual reporting, which in effect means companies could self-sort into three buckets: those fully adopting semiannual reporting, those electing a middle ground where they formally report on a semiannual basis but may periodically make voluntary interim disclosures, and those companies that remain on a quarterly reporting basis.
The SEC also has plans to move forward with changes to executive compensation rules. With the exception of several smaller, but conceptually complex, Dodd-Frank Act rulemakings, such as say-on-pay, the SEC has not more fully overhauled its executive compensation rules since 2006 when it created the now familiar Compensation Discussion & Analysis disclosure.
The SEC also has proposed to rescind the Biden-era climate risk disclosure regulation that was adopted by the prior Administration in a reduced form versus what was proposed. That rulemaking was challenged in court, although the case has largely been held in abeyance following the change in Administration in 2025. The current Commission leadership has argued that these rules are not financial in nature and would press companies to make costly disclosures about a range of topics that may be difficult to measure and which may depart from the concept of materiality.
Others have criticized the way in which the SEC appears to be effecting the rescission of the climate regulation. For example, a group of former SEC officials and securities law academics consisting of John Coates, John C. Coffee, Jr., James D. Cox, Merritt B. Fox, and Joel Seligman (Seligman is co-author of the Wolters Kluwer publication Securities Regulation - Loss, Seligman and Paredes), calling themselves collectively the “Shadow SEC,” recently issued a lengthy blog post arguing that the proposed rescission misconstrues the law and is highly partisan.
Crypto, shareholders, retail investors. Earlier this year, the SEC issued an interpretation on crypto that partially superseded voluminous guidance issued by the agency’s current leadership that sought to make the agency more crypto-friendly (See regarding investment contracts, mining and staking, and wrapping and airdrops).
Several items remain on the SEC’s crypto agenda. However, legislation on market structure reforms that is still wending its way through Congress may now be on a path that is perhaps made slightly less certain following recent, widely reported financial disclosures about President Trump’s and his family’s crypto holdings. It remains an open question whether the SEC might achieve most of what the current Administration wants for the crypto industry via guidance and rulemaking under its existing authorities or whether it will need a wider Congressional mandate in the form of comprehensive market structure reforms to achieve those goals.
Similarly, the SEC issued a collection of guidance materials shortly before the last proxy season that purported to limit activist engagement between shareholders and companies, even on more traditional governance matters and not just ESG investing issues. The timing of the guidance and an impending government shutdown increased the logistical difficulties for some companies and investors, but the guidance also eased the process for excluding some shareholder proposals, except for those addressing state law issues, which the agency said it still planned to review.
The SEC’s regulatory agenda contemplates further formal tweaks to rules for shareholder proposals “to modernize the requirements of Exchange Act Rule 14a-8 to reduce compliance burdens for registrants and account for developments since the rule was last amended.”
The SEC also has included an agenda item to expand retail investors’ access to private markets. Historically, the SEC has closely regulated who may invest in private market offerings, with certain individual accredited investors and institutions being the primary persons and entities eligible to invest. This arrangement exists because of the concern that retail investors may lack the means to demand adequate disclosure in private offerings while wealthy and/or financially sophisticated investors know how to fend for themselves, to paraphrase a Supreme Court opinion blessing the SEC’s historical approach.
The Trump Administration has taken a different path by proposing to let retail investors gain access to many types of private market investments in their retirement accounts (See the following regarding 401(k) plans). Private litigation, however, over the operation of closed-end funds that already garner many retail investors may not pose much of a limit on the SEC’s goals. The Supreme Court recently issued an opinion holding that the Investment Company Act does not confer a private action to seek rescission of contracts that violate the Act.
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