Public companies hoping that regulators will show them a shortcut to stifling shareholder lawsuits should instead have to go through a long slog, a Democratic member of the Securities and Exchange Commission said yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported. The SEC shouldn’t let a company doing an initial public offering restrict possible class-action lawsuits by its shareholders, Commissioner Robert Jackson Jr. told a New York investment conference. Such a move should only follow a rulemaking process through which the SEC gets public comments and studies the costs to investors of forcing disputes into private arbitration hearings, Jackson said.
