SEC sets investor advisory committee

The Securities and Exchange Commission has formed a new investor advisory committee. The 21-member committee, mandated in the Dodd-Frank reform law, will advise the commission on a variety of regulatory issues and priorities, the SEC said in a statement. Dodd-Frank authorizes the committee to submit findings and recommendations to the agency. The committee has a broad mandate to consider most, if not all, aspects of the SEC's work, said committee member Steven Wallman, founder and chief executive of Foliofn Inc., who also was a member of the SEC from 1994 to 1997. His company serves both independent advisers through its custody unit, Folio Institutional, and individual investors with its online retail brokerage, Folio Investing. Because the new committee was formed under a statute, “its recommendations may be taken with more gravitas and heft than they might otherwise be,” Mr. Wallman said. Recommendations might include statutory changes, he added. The SEC has yet to set a meeting schedule for the committee. The agency will also have to appoint a chair and a vice chair, and is expected to set up subcommittees as well. Mr. Wallman said the group would have to deal with “significant divergences” between institutional and retail investors in terms of what issues are important. He didn't know if the committee would wade into the debate over fiduciary duty for advisers. One issue he highlighted was the growing use of target-date funds. Where policymakers “help cajole or suggest that people default [into] them, that becomes a really important issue to ensure we get it right,” Mr. Wallman said. High-frequency trading might be another issue, he said. “And the whole concept of regulation is something people debate today,” Mr. Wallman added. “How much [regulation] should be left to the market, how much specifically regulated [by rule] or more generally at the conceptual level?” he said. “Looking at this list of [committee members], some will have very differing views on it.” The other committee members are: Darcy Bradbury, director of external affairs, D.E. Shaw & Co. LP; J. Robert Brown, Jr., a law professor at the University of Denver; Joseph Dear, chief investment officer, the California Public Employees' Retirement System; Eugene Duffy, senior executive vice president, Paradigm Asset Management Co. LLC. Roger Ganser, chairman of BetterInvesting; James Glassman, executive director, George W. Bush Institute; Craig Goettsch, director of investor education and consumer outreach, Iowa Insurance Division; Joseph Grundfest, professor of law and business, Stanford Law School; Mellody Hobson, president of Ariel Investments LLC; Stephen Holmes, chief operating officer, InterWest Partners. Adam Kanzer, general counsel of Domini Social Investments; Roy Katzovicz, chief legal officer, Pershing Square Capital Management LP; Barbara Roper, director of investor protection, Consumer Federation of America; Kurt Schacht, managing director, the CFA Institute; Alan Schnitzer, chief legal officer, The Travelers Companies Inc. Jean Setzfand, director of financial security for AARP; Anne Sheehan, director of corporate governance, the California State Teachers' Retirement System; Damon Silvers, associate general counsel for the AFL-CIO; Mark Tresnowski, general counsel, Madison Dearborn Partners LLC; and Ann Yerger, executive director, Council of Institutional Investors. The new committee replaces an older investor advisory committee that was disbanded in the wake of the Dodd-Frank law.