The U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee recently announced the advancement of several pieces of legislation designed to protect investors, support manufactured housing communities, and promote de novo depository institutions.
Committee Chair U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said that she was pleased to advance the bills to the House at the start of the committee markup session on July 28.
“Since the start of the 117th Congress, this Committee has marked up 21 bills and has held five markups. Today, this Committee will mark up 11 more bills,” she said in a statement. “As Chairwoman of this Committee, I am so very pleased to advance many strong pieces of legislation that Democrats on this Committee have introduced to bring relief to millions of Americans and to create a foundation for a stronger and more sustainable economy.”
The committee passed 11 pieces of legislation, including Waters’ bill, The Short Sale Transparency and Market Fairness Act, that would shorten the reporting period for 13-F disclosures from quarterly to monthly and require those reports to be filed within 10 days of the end of each month. The legislation would also require the SEC to complete rulemaking that would require aggregate short positions to be disclosed on the 13-F form and direct the SEC to study and report on the use of confidential filing requests.
The committee also passed a bill that amended the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 proposed by Rep. Al Green (D-TX) which would prohibit market makers from “trading ahead” or engaging in insider trading, as well also require the CEO of each market maker to annually certify that the CEO has performed reasonable due diligence to ensure the market maker has not engaged in prohibited activities.
The committee also passed two Republican bills, the Small Business Mergers, Acquisitions, Sales and Brokerage Simplification Act of 2021 from Rep. Bill Huizenga (R-MI), to codify long-standing SEC policy to exempt certain merger-and-acquisition brokers from securities registration requirements that facilitate the transfer of ownership of privately held companies with revenues under specific thresholds; and the Financial Exploitation Prevention Act of 2021 by Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO) that would amend the Investment Company Act of 1940 to allow a company to postpone a payment or redemption of security when they suspect the request of payment is the result of the exploitation of an elder.
“Today, Committee Democrats will continue to take a proactive approach by introducing a range of bills, including legislation that preserves housing rights and affordability of manufactured housing communities; legislation that ensures every household has the information they need to exercise their right to vote; and legislation that addresses the GameStop volatility from earlier this year to better protect investors and strengthen market integrity,” Water said. “Finally, I am pleased we will also be marking up two bills led by Republican Members of our Committee, Representative Huizenga and Representative Wagner.”