Wall Street’s top regulator should craft its own rule governing the advice that stockbrokers provide to retail investors, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s acting chairman said Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported. Michael Piwowar’s comments indicate that he favors the brokerage industry’s call to replace a rule issued last year by the Labor Department with one, written by the SEC, that businesses would find less onerous. The Labor Department rule, issued under the Obama administration, imposed new restrictions on conflicts of interest that affect investment advice. The Trump administration has postponed the measure, known as the fiduciary rule, as it considers how to modify or repeal it. “We at the SEC need to take the opportunity now to fill that space,” said Piwowar. His opposition to the Labor Department’s rule is well known. Piwowar blasted the measure in March, calling it a “highly political” effort guided by the Obama administration. He repeated that criticism on Friday, saying the rule wasn’t written to protect investors but to make it easier for trial lawyers to sue brokers.
