President Joe Biden’s SEC chair was already checked out when Donald Trump reclaimed the White House in November.
Gary Gensler would take a couple more weeks to announce his plans to step down as the Securities and Exchange Commission’s leader on Jan. 20. But a final sprint to advance dozens of unfinished regulations on his agenda never materialized, after little rulemaking progress in the fall.
Gensler’s predecessors used the waning months of their terms to accomplish several priorities. Mary Jo White ushered in a vast stock market surveillance system and new reporting forms for investment funds. Jay Clayton eased private market investments and tightened shareholder proposal rules.
Gensler? He and his fellow SEC commissioners rubber-stamped the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s budget.
Gensler joined the agency in 2021 with an ambitious agenda focused on bringing more rules and tougher policing to corporate America. Environmental, social, and governance disclosures, cryptocurrency restrictions, and other Democratic priorities gained more traction.
Four years later, Gensler’s work has included corporate greenhouse gas emissions reporting requirements and aggressive crypto market oversight. But the climate rules now are mired in litigation, and Gensler cast the decisive vote to approve the first exchange-traded funds that invest directly in Bitcoin despite concerns he said he had about risks crypto poses for investors. Many of his planned regulations never came to fruition, including ESG rules aimed at boosting board diversity and workforce management disclosures.
Now the SEC is expected to bring back lighter regulation with fewer restrictions on companies that seek investors’ money under Trump’s pick to lead the SEC, Paul Atkins, who has called Gensler’s rulemaking plans “very much overreaching.”
Gensler recently compared the SEC chairmanship to the classic “I Love Lucy” episode where Lucy and Ethel work on a chocolate factory assembly line, with candy whizzing by them faster than they could wrap it. He said the SEC faces “fifty- to a hundred-thousand matters a year,” and he tried his best to manage.
“It’s just so much,” Gensler said in December.
Gensler’s last full year as chair had a rough start when he voted with the two Republican commissioners in January 2024 to allow the Bitcoin ETFs, saying he was influenced by a court ruling against the SEC on that issue.
He pushed climate rules out in March but, reflecting fierce opposition from business interests, they were far less stringent than proposed in 2022. Companies, Republicans, and others still sued, and the SEC paused the regulations.
The vote that brought the climate rules happened during an open meeting, the SEC’s biggest public stage for advancing regulatory matters. Gensler wouldn’t hold another open meeting for five months.
To be fair, Gensler did wrap up some regulatory work in August and September. The commission boosted disclosure requirements under Form N-PORT and N-CEN—the White initiative—and let exchanges quote stocks in increments of a half penny, instead of a 1-cent minimum. So like Lucy and Ethel, he at least tried to wrap some chocolates.
Gensler on Wednesday defended his tenure, saying on Bloomberg TV he felt “terrific” during his last two weeks at the SEC. He said he looked out for everyday Americans and helped them save for a better future.
There wasn’t much else he could do now other than talk. New management’s already on its way to the chocolate factory.
