This is a welcome and important change in direction and policy at the SEC: to focus on what is important to investors making economic decisions, and not on topics of political interest. The prior Administration weighted very heavily the interest of a limited group of investors in particular subjects (with climate change being the most obvious example) and seemed largely indifferent to the costs of the disclosure. (For an example of the debate over this issue, see )

This is quite a significant change in the very longstanding interpretation that transaction compensation should be paid to a natural person and not to a personal service entity. The revised interpretation will undoubtedly lead to quite a bit of restructuring of compensation arrangements at broker-dealers that work on the independent contract model, rather than on the employee model.

The significance of the interpretation potentially extends well beyond the immediate topic of the…

Can anyone demonstrate that sustainability disclosures that were not material to an issuer's investors have created some desired and long-term change in behavior? As Commissioner Uyeda indicates, if it is desirable to have a change in environmental conduct, that change should be driven by Congress and the environmental regulators. Forcing issuers to make disclosures of issues that are not relevant to investors is more likely to discourage issuers from going public than they are to change…

It is an unfortunately political reality that regulators may use high numbers of enforcement actions and penalty amounts as a metric for success. But is it? Perhaps economic growth and clarity of rules are better metrics, even if they are less amenable to press releases.