A recent Securities and Exchange Commission rule that might allow the agency to reclaim bonuses from certain executives mustn’t discourage corporations from going public, SEC Chair Gary Gensler said Friday.
The “clawback rule” broadens SEC regulators’ authority to get well incentive-based compensation to current and former executives of public corporations that was awarded based on errors of their financial statements. Gensler told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the agency is following through on a rule mandated by Congress.
“This was a simple thing that Congress said,” Gensler said. “When you’ve got the fallacious faulty financials and someone’s getting paid on those faulty financials, then they ought not keep the cash. I feel it’s pretty straightforward.”
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler testifies before a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee oversight hearing on the SEC on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 14, 2021.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
Congress mandated the clawback back rule after the 2007 financial crisis, but it surely was abandoned in 2015. The SEC under Gensler revived it last yr as part of a bigger effort to rein in executives for corporate wrongdoing.
Gensler denied claims that an excessive amount of of the SEC’s rulemaking agenda is targeted on regulatory efforts that can stall in Congress. He added that Congress mandated many of the agency’s agenda greater than a decade ago.
“We’ve got a three-part mission. It’s about investor protection. It’s about capital formation. It’s in regards to the markets,” Gensler told CNBC. “Eight of our parts of our regulatory agenda [were] mandated by Congress 12 years ago in that Dodd-Frank Act. We actually had one other couple of mandates as well. So we had [Congress mandate] nine or 10 of our agenda, but our agenda is about investor protection and the opposite parts of our mission.”
