Good morning, Chair Van Hollen, Ranking Member Hagerty, and members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for inviting me to testify today on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 budget request. As is customary, I’d like to note that my views are my own as Chair of the SEC, and I am not
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Skadden Discusses the UK ICO Strategy on AI Governance
Rather than specifically regulating artificial intelligence (AI), the UK government has opted to rely on the existing web of laws and regulations applying to technology across a spectrum of sectors in its jurisdiction. But with this pro-innovation, principles-based approach comes questions that have remained unanswered. Many relate to the application of UK data privacy laws…
The Elephant in Tesla’s Boardroom
Next week, Tesla investors will cast an unprecedented vote on what a court called the “largest chief-executive pay package in the history of public markets.” While the vote has been closely watched, little attention has been paid to the elephant in the (board)room: Musk’s threat not to develop Tesla into an artificial-intelligence leader if he…
SEC Enforcement Chief Discusses Five Principles of Effective Cooperation in Investigations
This event, together with its East Coast and now Midwest counterparts, offers regulators like me a unique opportunity to speak directly to leaders of the securities bar about issues of mutual concern. That’s what I’d like to do this afternoon – speak to you all directly about a topic that has been widely discussed at
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Skadden Discusses Court’s Broad View of Copyright Preemption in Data Scraping Case
The recent California district court decision dismissing the complaint in X Corp. v. Bright Data Ltd. could have significant implications for companies that rely on their terms of use to prohibit unauthorized “data scraping” — that is, using automated tools to extract data from a website or online services.
While data scraping was the subject of significant…
Can Decentralized Finance Promote Democracy?
In a recent paper, I draw a rough map of the vast field of decentralized finance (DeFi). DeFi serves as an umbrella term for financial platform transactions that operate through automated protocols on blockchain and have prompted hard discussions regarding the public and private nature of money. With a focus on the competing understandings…
Stakeholder Governance and the Eclipse of Shareholder Primacy
For decades, advocates of “shareholder primacy” as the North Star of corporate governance have steered our leading corporations and our Nation’s economic engine perilously off-course. Since the 1970s, when the work of Milton Friedman, Michael Jensen, and Frank Easterbrook took hold in business schools, activists and raiders in high-profile proxy fights and hostile…
Governance Implications of the Latest DOJ Corporate Fraud Enforcement Policies
Corporate boards will be called upon to renew their oversight of corporate compliance following the recent announcement of several new corporate fraud enforcement initiatives by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). Most notably, these include a new whistleblower program and the expectation that effective compliance programs will monitor the risks of companies’ misuse of emerging…
Biased Boards
How do directors add value to corporations, and what are their incentives? They add value through monitoring and advising management – although monitoring seems to have taken precedence in the wake of high-profile financial scandals. As for directors’ incentives, the answer is less straightforward. While director compensation has increased in recent years, non-pecuniary incentives remain…