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The Senate Banking Committee yesterday approved with bipartisan support a raft of bills aimed at spurring capital formation, marking its first step this year toward modernizing market rules that critics have said are outdated and get in the way of business expansion and investment, Reuters reported. The Senate Banking Committee, chaired by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), is now poised to send to the Senate floor five bills that garnered support from both Democrats and Republicans, with Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Jack Reed (R.I.) the only dissenters. The bills propose a variety of changes to the Securities and Exchange Commission's regulations, such as raising the dollar amount of stock options that private companies can award employees in a given year from $5 million to $10 million, and easing restrictions to allow brokers to publish research on the global $3.7 trillion exchange-traded fund market. They would also boost the number of people that can invest in venture capital funds without triggering certain federal rules, subject mutual funds in Puerto Rico to the same rules that funds already face on the U.S. mainland and credit stock exchanges for any fees and assessments they may have overpaid to the SEC in the last decade.

President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission faces a range of possible conflicts of interest due to the long list of banks and public companies he has represented as one of Wall Street’s top lawyers, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Jay Clayton, a partner at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP whose Senate confirmation hearing is scheduled for March 23, has done legal work for Ally Financial Inc., Barclays PLC, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, Tudor Investment Corp. and its co-chairman Paul Tudor Jones, and Pershing Square LP, according to a federal ethics report made public yesterday. Under SEC ethics rules, Clayton likely wouldn’t be able to participate in agency business — such as enforcement cases — that directly involves his former clients. Clayton has represented Valeant Pharmaceuticals International Inc., a firm that is currently under SEC and criminal investigations. He has counseled two other corporate clients whose identities were withheld from his ethics report because they face a “nonpublic investigation,” according to the disclosure.

Jay Clayton, a corporate lawyer tapped by President Donald Trump to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, is set to testify before the Senate Banking Committee on March 23, the committee announced yesterday, according to the Wall Street Journal. If confirmed by the Senate, Clayton would succeed Mary Jo White, who stepped down from the top U.S. markets cop role at the end of the Obama administration. The hearing is a crucial step in Clayton securing Senate confirmation, likely later this spring. A veteran Wall Street lawyer who has represented Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Clayton is expected to focus on easing what he sees as unnecessary regulations on raising capital.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said it is marching ahead with inspections, company filing reviews and enforcement of financial regulations, even though the new administration is painting a future free from such rules, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform rules remain on the books despite President Donald Trump’s executive orders aimed at rolling back the law and overhauling federal regulations. SEC staff spent two days at the Practicing Law Institute’s “SEC Speaks” Conference in Washington D.C. recapping a year of progress on financial reforms likely to be stripped away by a new president and Republican-led Congress. And they also stressed continued enforcement of those rules. Many of the rules enforced by the SEC were mandated by the Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley laws, which can only be revoked by Congress.

Companies must continue to comply with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rules on disclosing “conflict minerals” and the ratio comparing executive pay to the median employee, said Shelley Parratt, acting director of the SEC’s division of corporation finance, on Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported. “Although we are seeking comments on them, both rules remain in effect,” Parratt said on Friday. SEC acting chairman Michael Piwowar in recent weeks has requested public comment on the two provisions of the Dodd-Frank overhaul law. Piwowar also instructed SEC staff to look at the rule mandate and see if alternate interpretations could offer some relief to companies trying to comply. “The Dodd-Frank Act is ripe with burdens ultimately borne by the forgotten investors,” Piwowar said on Friday.

A U.S. appeals court said yesterday that it would rehear a challenge to the Securities and Exchange Commission's use of in-house judges, Reuters reported. The order issued by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit wiped out a three-judge panel's August decision in favor of the commission. The court indicated that 10 of the court's judges will hear the case. Oral arguments will be held on May 24. Former radio host Raymond Lucia brought the challenge, arguing that the agency's administrative law judges were unconstitutionally appointed. Lucia, known for his "Buckets of Money" investment strategy, was hoping to beat back fraud charges. The SEC has in recent years has come under attack by defendants who have questioned the fairness of its in-house trials. In December, a federal appeals court in Denver ruled that the appointments process was unconstitutional, raising the prospect of the question ultimately being decided by the Supreme Court.

Mary Jo White, the former top government securities law enforcer, is returning to Debevoise & Plimpton, the New York-based law firm where she previously headed its litigation department, the New York Times reported today. White, who announced plans in November to leave the Securities and Exchange Commission as its chairwoman, will serve as senior chairwoman of the law firm, focusing on counseling boards and representing clients on significant and delicate legal matters, including companies facing crises involving multifaceted government investigations and cases. After joining the securities commission in April 2013, White sought a stricter crackdown on securities violators, changing the agency’s practice of allowing companies to neither admit nor deny wrongdoing. More than 80 companies were brought to account in trials or administrative proceedings.