Good evening and welcome to tonight’s Open Call on the SEC Roundtable on Thinly Traded Securities and an update on the SEC Transaction fee pilot, aka the Access fee pilot. Tonight’s call is brought to you by the STA Foundation a 501 c 3 corporation that serves as STA’s educational arm.
Last October, the Department of the Treasury published a report that assessed the U.S. capital markets and offered recommendations for enhancement. Overtime, the Treasury’s report has received a good amount of attention for its content to such a degree that Chairman Clayton identified it as one of two resources he will be using in identifying areas of improvement within our equity markets.
In Chairman’s April 10th speech he noted, and I quote, “The issue of facilitating capital formation and increasing the attractiveness of the public markets for smaller companies is one of my highest priorities as SEC Chairman. I am concerned that Main Street investors are bearing costs (and missing investment opportunities) as a result of the shrinking number of U.S.-listed public companies.
Chairman Clayton then went on to say:
“The Capital Markets Report highlighted many of these issues and recommended that the SEC consider allowing issuers of thinly-traded securities to suspend unlisted trading privileges, or UTP, for a stock so that it would trade on a smaller number of venues until liquidity reached a minimum threshold. I anticipate that this recommendation will receive close review at the staff’s roundtable.”
An executive summary report is here