SEC chief Paul Atkins vows to fast-track Trump's proposal to end quarterly results reports

Wall Street’s top regulator pledged to fast-track Donald Trump’s proposal to end quarterly reporting for most companies, the US president’s latest foray into a long-running debate over transparency in American capitalism.

Paul Atkins, chairman of the US Securities and Exchange Commission, said the proposal will give companies the option to report on a semi-annual basis and many firms might still choose to publish quarterly results.

“Giving companies the option to report semi-annually is not a retreat from transparency,” Atkins said in a column for the Financial Times. “It is time for the SEC to remove its thumb from the scales and allow the market to dictate the optimal reporting frequency based on factors such as the company’s industry, size and investor expectations.”

Trump floated the idea of jettisoning quarterly reporting earlier this month, though it wasn’t the first time he’d proposed such an idea. The SEC vetted the idea after Trump raised it during his first term in office, but momentum faded when no consensus emerged.

SEC mandate

The SEC mandated for companies to report every quarter in 1970, part of its decades-long push to increase transparency following the stock market crash in 1929. Critics have argued that such reporting has its downsides. The practice increases costs, pushes companies to focus on the short term — hampering investment and innovation — and can lead to overreactions by investors, opponents say.

“The government should provide the minimum effective dose of regulation needed to protect investors while allowing businesses to flourish,” Atkins said in the FT. Trump’s proposal, he said, “puts a renewed focus on market-driven disclosure practices that favour the interests of companies and their investors over prescriptive regulatory mandates.”