Paul Atkins was sworn into office as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on April 21, 2025. And one of the first orders of business may be a review of rules to respond to President Trump’s executive order that calls for the reduction of anti-competitive regulatory barriers.
Atkins was named by President Trump to run the agency, and the Senate confirmed him on April 9, the same day that the White House issued the executive order that said federal regulations should not predetermine economic winners and losers.
“Regulations that reduce competition, entrepreneurship, and innovation — as well as the benefits they create for American consumers — should be eliminated,” the executive order states. “This order commences the process for eliminating anti-competitive regulations to revitalize the American economy.”
In consultation with the chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)—currently Andrew Ferguson—and Attorney General—currently Pamela Bondi—agency heads are ordered to complete a review of all regulations subject to their rulemaking authority.
“Agency” includes the SEC, which declined to comment on the order.
Each agency head is asked to identify those that, among other things, create unnecessary barriers to entry for new market participants and limit competition.
Specifics of Executive Order
Within 70 days of the order, each agency must come up with a list of identified regulations along with recommendations as to whether the regulations warrant rescission or modification.
Before providing the recommendations, each agency is expected to issue a request for information from the public on the identification of regulations. The request is to remain open for 40 days.
The FTC chair, in consultation with the attorney general, is expected to provide to the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) a consolidated list of regulations that warrant rescission or modification, within 90 days of receipt of agencies’ lists. OMB director is Russell Vought.
The FTC chair may include regulations that were not originally on an agency list.
Upon receipt of the consolidated list, Vought, in consultation with Ferguson, Bondi, the assistant to the president for economic policy, and the relevant agency heads will decide whether to incorporate the proposed rescissions or modifications into the Unified Regulatory Agenda that was developed by executive order 14219 dated February 19, 2025, Ensuring Lawful Governance and Implementing the President’s “Department of Government Efficiency” Deregulatory Initiative.
This particular order says that agencies should identify unlawful regulations and repeal them. And they should prioritize that review under 10 recent Supreme Court cases, including Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo that overturned the Chevron doctrine, West Virginia v. EPA that applied the Major Questions doctrine, and SEC v. Jarkesy that made it unconstitutional for the commission to use in-house judges to seek civil penalties.
What This Could Mean for PCAOB
While the order that deals with anti-competition applies to independent agencies, there could be a trickle-down effect on the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), which the SEC oversees.
“I suspect Atkins will apply this order to PCAOB rules,” said Daniel Goelzer, who was a founding member of the PCAOB and previously served as a general counsel of the SEC. “We’ll see.”
Whether the SEC forces the PCAOB to review its standards and rules is unclear. But accounting firms that audit public companies want change.
In an interview on April 21, Allison Henry, vice president of professional and technical standards at the Pennsylvania Institute of CPAs (PICPA), said that auditors want a completely different strategy and approach from PCAOB leaders.
In particular, Henry criticized the PCAOB’s strategic plan set during the Biden administration under the leadership of Chair Erica Williams, who was named to the position when Gensler was chair.
The 2022-2026 plan has four long-term goals: modernizing audit standards, enhancing inspections, strengthening enforcement and improving organizational effectiveness. And Henry criticized the board’s aggressive enforcement, inspection, and standard-setting activities, echoing the frustrations that not only the auditing profession had but also the businesses they audit.
“We think that their [enforcement] actions have been overly aggressive” without “good parameters” on how they decide on cases and how much to impose for violations, she said.
The PCAOB has set records in terms of penalty amounts. The board also for the first time sanctioned an auditor for failing to supervise employees in the case of Scott Marcello, who was vice chair of audit at KPMG LLP when the employees were engaged in a scheme to fraudulently improve the PCAOB’s audit inspection results.
“You see these huge increases in the number of enforcement actions, and it’s having a real challenging impact on practitioners,” PICPA’s Henry said, especially when some of the actions that resulted from enforcement sweeps seemed insignificant infractions that did not hurt any investors.
Aggressive enforcement combined with quick pace and large volume of standard-setting as well as aggressive inspections are leading to “the huge decline in the number of smaller firms,” she said. “And that is not good for capital markets. It’s also a real challenge to go public. If the company’s only choice for auditors is a large firm, and a large firm is saying, you know, here are my fees.’ That is really a mismatch.”
But Henry said that she is hopeful that the approach will shift with Atkins at the SEC.
This is especially true as Atkins is expected to pursue a deregulatory agenda not only because he is Trump’s appointee, but also because of his own philosophy regarding regulations.
When he was a commissioner of the SEC from 2002 to 2008, he championed largely free market ideals. Moreover, he has never been a fan of the PCAOB.
But Trump’s executive order has investor advocates worried.
“So much for the independence of the agency,” said former SEC chief accountant Lynn Turner. “And not a single word about regulations for protecting investors.”
This article originally appeared in the April 23, 2025, edition of Accounting & Compliance Alert, available on Checkpoint.
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