WASHINGTON, Feb 17 - The head of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on Tuesday that the agency is considering reforms that would reduce how many top corporate officers are covered by comprehensive investor disclosures of compensation.
Paul Atkins, who serves as SEC chair, told an audience in prepared remarks that regulators should "reconsider the number of executives for whom compensation information is provided." His comments signaled forthcoming proposals intended to ease the regulatory burden for public companies and shift certain disclosure requirements away from investors and back toward corporate issuers.
Atkins outlined a range of potential amendments the agency is exploring. Those options include simplifying the way executive pay is measured against company performance, reclassifying some personal security expenses so they are treated as necessities rather than executive "perks," and tightening the situations that trigger reporting of transactions involving entities with ties to executives' family members.
On family-related reporting, Atkins noted perceived shortcomings in current rules, saying that "the rule makes no distinction based on the closeness or continuity of a relationship." He suggested an alternative benchmark for defining "immediate family members," adding: "Perhaps a more workable standard for 'immediate family members' is whether the executive has shared a Thanksgiving meal with them in the past year."
The SEC put an overhaul of corporate disclosure rules on its regulatory agenda last September, and Atkins's remarks on Tuesday foreshadowed how that effort may be shaped. Since assuming the chair in April, Atkins has advanced proposals that embrace the cryptocurrency sector and signaled broader deregulatory priorities.
Atkins's agenda aligns with actions by other policymakers. The White House, which has asserted direct control over the SEC, has called for an end to quarterly reporting and for reforms addressing shareholder disputes, positions that intersect with the agency's disclosure review.
Support from some corporate executives has accompanied Republican-led efforts to roll back certain pay-disclosure requirements, including rules adopted after the 2008 financial crisis that were designed to give investors clearer insight into executive incentives. By contrast, Democrats have defended existing pay-disclosure mandates and advocated for limits they say are necessary to curb risky behavior by corporate managers.
The chair's comments come as the SEC prepares concrete proposals to implement parts of its disclosure agenda. The specific measures Atkins described - narrowing the list of reportable executives, revising pay-versus-performance calculations, recategorizing certain security costs, and tightening the scope of family-related transaction reporting - outline the types of regulatory changes companies and investors may expect to see under consideration.
Beyond the policy details, Atkins's public remarks underscore a broader regulatory shift that may alter the balance between investor transparency and corporate reporting burdens. How the agency translates these priorities into formal rule changes, and how those changes are received by lawmakers and market participants, will determine the ultimate scope and impact of any reform.
Promotional note included in the original remarks: The text accompanying the remarks also featured a promotional passage asking what the best investment opportunities in 2026 might be, and described an investment product that combines institutional-grade data with AI-powered insights to assist investors, referenced as InvestingPro+ with a feature named WarrenAI.