A summary with a link to opinion here: www.bellnunnally.com/news/fifth-c...

A link to the 2008 article and my thoughts on what to expect is available here: www.bellnunnally.com/news/president-trumps-nominee-to-replace-gary-gensler-as-chair-of-the-u-s-securities-and-exchange-commission-is-both-something-old-and-something-new/

But what has the crypto industry most excited is his recent work on financial technology and digital assets. He's a co-chair of the Token Alliance, a digital asset industry group.

Despite this, Atkins is known for commitment to light-touch regulation. As the SEC considered regulations during the fallout from the tech crash, he opposed what he saw as overreach in regulatory policy. His views are in line with 2 decades of establishment Republican thought.

Atkins’ tenure at the SEC coincided with significant regulatory challenges: He was appointed less than a year after Enron’s and the same month as WorldCom’s bankruptcy. Sarbanes-Oxley passed the day before his appointment.

A glimpse into where he will take the SEC is his 2008 article in the Fordham Journal of Corporate and Financial Law, “Evaluating the Mission: A Critical Review of the History and Evolution of the SEC Enforcement Program.”

Both current Republican SEC Commissioners, Hester Peirce and Mark Uyeda, served as counsel to Atkins during his previous stint as an SEC Commissioner.

I might take this with a grain of salt given that the President doesn’t have any appointment power at all for FINRA.

To be clear, the decision is mostly a win for FINRA on the specifics in front of the D.C. Circuit Court. But the majority’s reasoning raises more questions than it answers. media.cadc.uscourts.gov/opinions/doc...

FINRA is charged with and regularly enforces not only the securities laws, but also the Bank Secrecy Act, among other federal statutes. Can FINRA do that under the non-delegation doctrine? We don’t know!

The dissent, which would hold FINRA’s entire enforcement regime unconstitutional, pointed out that FINRA enforces the federal securities laws. Majority avoids this issue by noting that FINRA was not doing that in this case without answering the question of whether that would be constitutional.

But much of what FINRA does can have "severe consequences" for a member firm or registered representative long before the SEC can review FINRA’s actions.

The court held that the SEC did not exercise ultimate control over expulsion orders entered through expedited proceedings because those orders take effect immediately and “the severe consequences associated with expulsion can make any later review by the SEC a largely academic exercise.”

The “private entity must act only ‘as an aid’ to an accountable government agency that retains the ultimate authority to ‘approve[], disapprove[], or modif[y]’ the private entity’s actions and decisions on delegated matters.”

But there’s more going on here that raises significant unresolved questions about FINRA’s enforcement program. The court reasoned that FINRA is a private entity and expelling a member firm without prior SEC review would delegate to it too much authority.

The court held that FINRA could conduct its expedited proceedings and ultimately it will be up to the SEC to either affirm or reject the result. The only difference is that FINRA’s decision to expel a member doesn’t go into effect until the SEC’s process is concluded.

The D.C. Circuit Court held in Alpine v. FINRA that FINRA cannot involuntarily expel member firms before allowing the SEC to independently review and reach its own conclusion about expulsion. This result is simple enough, and many commentators have observed that the decision is limited in scope.