Paul Atkins closes in on SEC chair role amid setbacks š
US President Donald Trumpās SEC chair nominee, Paul Atkins, is inching closer toward becoming the SECās new leader, with a Senate hearing reportedly planned for March 27.
President Donald Trump nominated Atkins to lead the SEC on Dec. 4, but his marriage into a billionaire family has reportedly caused headaches with financial disclosures ā delaying his potential start date.
While it isnāt clear whether the White House has produced those papers to the Senate, Senate Banking, House and Urban Affairs Chair Tim Scott is reportedly eyeing a March 27 hearing to review Atkinsā standing, Semaforās Eleanor Mueller said in a March 17 X post.
āNo clarity yet on whether the committee has Atkinsā paperwork in hand, but either way, this is the most momentum weāve seen so far.ā
Atkins would, however, need to be voted in by the Senate at a later date.
Mueller also said the Senate banking committee is also planning to hold a bipartisan meeting on Atkinsā nomination on March 21.
It follows an earlier March 3 Semafor report, where Mueller said financial disclosures had held Atkins back from scheduling a Senate hearing to review his standing.
His wifeās family is tied to TAMKO Building Products LLC ā a manufacturer of residential roofing shingles that reportedly turned over $1.2 billion in revenue in 2023, Forbes said on Dec. 14, 2024.
āItās a lot to go through,ā one former Senate Banking Committee staffer reportedly told Mueller on March 3.
āBut he got named so early on, so I think thatās why people are starting to be like, āWhat the hellās taking so long?āā
Atkins previously served as an SEC commissioner between 2002 and 2008 and worked as a corporate lawyer at Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP in New York before that. He is expected to regulate the crypto arena with a more collaborative approach than former SEC Chair Gary Gensler.
Itās been almost four months since Atkins was chosen by Trump to lead the SEC on Dec. 4, and over two months since Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20.
A late start for an SEC chair wouldnāt be too unusual, however.
The two most recent SEC chairs, Gary Gensler and Jay Clayton, started on April 17, 2021, and May 4, 2017 ā months after presidential transitions occurred in those years.
Meanwhile, Mark Uyeda has been serving as the SECās acting chair since Gensler left on Jan. 20.
Since then, the Uyeda-led SEC has established a Crypto Task Force led by SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce and canceled a controversial rule that asked financial firms holding crypto to record them as liabilities on their balance sheets.
The SEC has dropped several investigations and lawsuits that the Gensler-led commission filed against the likes of Coinbase, Consensys, Robinhood, Gemini, Uniswap and OpenSea over the last month.
The SEC is also looking to abandon a rule requiring crypto firms to register as exchanges and may even axe the Biden administrationās proposed crypto custody rules, Uyeda said on March 17.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/trumps-sec-chair-paul-atkins-senate-committee-hearing