SEC Chair White Discusses International Cooperation in a Data-Driven World

SEC Chair White spoke at the Brooklyn Law School International Business Law Roundtable. Her remarks focused on the importance of international cooperation in the regulation of securities markets.

Chair White emphasized that international coordination is "crucial for addressing systemic risk." She noted that, in the aftermath of the financial crisis, "over half the recipients and over half the total dollars" of the bailout money from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System went to foreign banking organizations. She stressed that regulators should take a "forward-leaning approach" to preventing "regulatory arbitrage" in foreign jurisdictions.

Chair White identified swaps regulation as an area that "demands global collaboration" on data aggregation and margin. She stated that insufficient attention has been paid to data standardization and quality, and called on regulators to create a global taxonomy to provide international standards that would involve, among other things, naming conventions and data ordering.

Additionally, Chair White urged international regulators to collaborate on an approach to swaps margin, which should include posting cash or high-quality collateral up front and on an ongoing basis and establishing minimum standards for swaps margin to create a global floor that would prevent the emergence of "swaps evasion jurisdictions."

Chair White also recommended that international regulators evaluate global accounting standards, and noted that the regulators should "move on" from the debate between the two standards - United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and the International Financial Reporting Standards. Instead, Chair White advocated that a new accounting regime be established and said that the SEC's examination of the effectiveness of corporate disclosures also could be utilized to address accounting and financial reporting.

See: Chair White's Remarks.