U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Gary Gensler testifies during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Capitol Hill September 12, 2023 in Washington, DC.
Drew Angerer | Getty Images
The annual two-day “SEC Speaks” event kicked off Tuesday, offering clues to what the priorities will be for the Securities and Exchange Commission in the coming year.
Sponsored by the Practicing Law Institute, it is a forum where the SEC provides guidance to the legal community on rules, regulations, enforcement actions and lawsuits. The event allows the SEC to get its main messages across, and this year a key issue is “disclosure.”
“[W]e have an obligation to update the rules of the road, always with an eye toward promoting trust as well as efficiency, competition, and liquidity in the markets,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in his introduction to the conference. Besides Gensler, all the SEC division heads and senior staff will be speaking.
Based on Gensler’s introductory remarks, there will be discussions about the upcoming move to shorten the securities settlement cycle from two days to one (T+1, which takes place May 28), the expansion of the definition of an exchange to include more recent trading platforms (like request-for-quote, or RFQ, electronic trading platforms), consideration of a change in the current one-penny increment for quoting stock trades to sub-penny levels, creation of a best execution standard for broker-dealers, and creation of more competition for individual investors orders (so-called payment for order flow).
The SEC’s mission
You often hear SEC officials say the role of the SEC is to “protect investors, maintain fair, orderly and efficient markets, and facilitate capital formation.”
That sounds like a pretty broad mandate, and it is. Deliberately so. It came out of the disaster of the 1929 stock market crash, which was the initial event in the greatest economic catastrophe of the last 100 years: the Great Depression.
Prior to 1933, and particularly in the 1920s, all sorts of securities were sold to the public with wild claims behind them, much of which were fraudulent. After the crash of 1929, Congress went looking for a cause, and fraudulent claims and lack of disclosure were high on the list.
Congress then passed the Securities Act of 1933, and the following year passed the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which created the SEC to enforce all the new laws. It also required everyone involved in the securities business (mainly brokerage firms and stock exchanges) to register with the SEC.
The 1933 Act did not make it illegal to sell a bad investment. It simply required disclosure: all relevant facts about an investment were supposed to be disclosed, and investors could make up their own minds.
The 1933 Act was the first major federal legislation to regulate the offer and sale of securities in the United States. This was followed by the Investment Company Act of 1940, which regulated mutual funds (and eventually ETFs), and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, which required investment advisers to register with the SEC.
On the agenda
Tuesday’s conference is a chance for Gensler and his staff to tell everyone what they are doing in greater detail. The agency has six divisions, but they can be boiled down to disclosure, risk monitoring and enforcement.
Risk monitoring. To fulfill its mandate to protect investors, it’s critical to understand what the risks to investors are. There is an economic and risk analysis division that does that.
Disclosure. At the heart of the whole game is disclosure. That is the original requirement of the 1933 Act. The SEC has a division of corporation finance to make sure that Corporate America provides disclosures on issues that could materially affect companies. This starts with an initial public offering and continues when the company becomes publicly traded.
There’s also a division of examinations that conducts the SEC’s National Exam Program. It’s just what it sounds like. The SEC identifies areas of high concern (cybersecurity, crypto, money laundering, climate change, etc.) and then monitors Corporate America (investment advisers, investment companies, broker-dealers, etc.) to make sure they are in compliance with all the required disclosures. Current hot topics include climate change, crypto and cybersecurity.
The problem is that the definition of what should be disclosed has evolved over the decades. For example, there is a bitter legal fight brewing over the recent enactment of regulations requiring companies to disclose climate risks. Many contend this was not part of the original SEC mandate. The SEC disagrees, arguing it is part of the mandate to “protect investors.”
Enforcement. The SEC can use the information they gather to make policy recommendations, and if they feel a company is not in compliance, they can also refer them to the dreaded division of enforcement.
These are the cops. They conduct investigations into securities laws violations, and they prosecute the civil suits in the federal courts. This division will be providing an update on the litigation the SEC is involved in, which is growing.
Mutual funds, ETFs and investment advisers. We’ll also hear from the division that monitor mutual funds and investment advisers. Most people invest in the markets through an investment advisor, and they usually buy mutual funds or ETFs. This is all governed by the Investment Company Act of 1940 and the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. There’s a division of investment management that monitors all the investment companies (that includes mutual funds, money market funds, closed-end funds, and ETFs) and investment advisers. This division will be sharing insights on some of the new disclosure requirements that have been enacted in the past couple years, particularly rules adopted in August 2023 for advisers to private funds.
Trading. Finally, the division of trading and markets monitors everyone involved in trading: broker-dealers, stock exchanges, clearing agencies, etc. We can expect updates on record-keeping requirements, shortening the trading cycle (the U.S. goes to a one-day settlement from a three-day settlement on May 28, which is a big deal), and short sale disclosure.
Did we mention SPACs?
Donald Trump will likely not come up at the conference, but the SEC in January considerably tightened the rules around disclosure of special purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs. Trump’s company, Truth Social, went public on March 22 through a merger with a SPAC known as Digital World Acquisition Corp. It is now trading as Trump Media & Technology (DJT), and it made disclosures Monday that caused the stock to drop about 22%.
Prior to the recent rule changes, executives marketing a company to be acquired by a SPAC often made wild claims about the future profitability of these businesses — claims that would never have been possible to make had a traditional initial public offering route been used. The new SPAC rules that the SEC adopted made the target company legally liable for any statement made about future results by assuming responsibility for disclosures.
Additionally, companies are provided with a “safe harbor” protection when they make forward-looking statements, which provide them with protection against certain legal liabilities. However, IPOs are not afforded this “safe harbor” protection, which is why forward-looking statements in an IPO registration are usually very cautiously worded.
The rules clarified that SPACs also do not have “safe harbor” legal protections for forward-looking statements, which means the companies could more easily be sued.
Like I said, Trump will likely not come up at the conference, but the message: “Disclosure!” will likely be the dominant refrain.
The landscape of institutional debt markets is undergoing a profound structural shift on July 21, 2026, as major corporate issuers and commercial banks rapidly accelerate the deployment of tokenized debt instruments. Data published by leading capital market consortiums indicates that primary issuances of digital commercial paper and tokenized corporate bonds have reached record volumes this month. By moving legacy debt origination, underwriting, and secondary distribution onto permissioned distributed ledgers, corporate treasurers are unlocking unprecedented operational flexibility and instantaneous cross-border liquidity.
The adoption of tokenized debt is fundamentally altering how enterprise balance sheets manage short-term liquidity needs. Traditional corporate bond settlement cycles historically required multi-day clearing processes involving numerous intermediaries, custodial entities, and clearinghouses. Through programmable smart contracts on distributed ledgers, issuers can now execute atomic settlement—enabling continuous, 24/7 access to institutional capital pools. This instantaneous clearing mechanism drastically reduces counterparty risk, eliminates costly settlement friction, and allows treasury teams to dynamically optimize working capital in real time.
A major catalyst driving this institutional migration is the establishment of comprehensive digital asset regulatory frameworks across major financial hubs. Clear legal guidelines regarding ledger-based securities ownership have provided institutional compliance officers with the regulatory confidence necessary to transition multi-billion-dollar liquidity facilities onto digital platforms. Furthermore, the integration of automated regulatory reporting directly into token smart contracts simplifies ongoing compliance audits, ensuring that secondary market trades automatically enforce investor accreditation limits and tax withholding requirements.
For chief financial officers and institutional portfolio managers, tokenized debt represents a fundamental evolution in fixed-income strategy. Companies that embrace ledger-based debt structures gain direct access to a broader, global base of digital-native institutional investors while substantially reducing borrowing overhead. As ledger interoperability continues to improve across global exchanges, tokenized debt is poised to become the standard infrastructure for global corporate finance.
Private credit has firmly established itself as a foundational pillar of global financial markets in 2026, transitioning from an alternative asset class into a dominant mechanism for middle-market corporate financing. Reports published in mid-July 2026 show that direct lending assets under management have expanded significantly, as corporate borrowers increasingly bypass traditional syndication desks in favor of customized private debt solutions. This structural migration has fundamentally altered corporate liquidity dynamics, providing middle-market enterprises with reliable access to tailored capital packages even during periods of regulatory bank tightening.
The primary driver of this continued growth is the structural flexibility inherent in private debt agreements. Unlike public bond markets or conservative commercial bank loans—which often carry rigid covenants and slow underwriting timelines—private credit funds offer speed of execution, flexible payment-in-kind structures, and customized debt-service frameworks. For companies undertaking strategic acquisitions, capital expenditures, or complex balance sheet recapitalizations, the ability to negotiate directly with a unified syndicate of private lenders provides significant certainty and confidentiality.
However, the expansion of private credit is attracting heightened regulatory attention and risk scrutiny. Financial regulatory bodies are closely evaluating the lack of secondary market price discovery and the potential concentration of illiquidity risks within non-bank financial institutions. Because private debt instruments are held to maturity and marked to model rather than marked to market, evaluating real-time enterprise valuations during economic shifts requires robust internal credit assessment standards. Analysts note that as loan portfolios mature, performance variations between disciplined lenders and aggressive underwriters will become increasingly apparent.
For corporate financial officers and institutional portfolio managers, private credit represents both a powerful strategic tool and a vital diversification strategy. Borrowers must weigh the higher nominal coupon rates of private debt against the tangible value of operational flexibility and execution certainty. Meanwhile, investors must maintain rigorous credit due diligence, prioritizing funds with proven restructuring capabilities and deep operational expertise in underwriting resilient middle-market businesses.
The integration of blockchain technology with legacy financial markets has reached a decisive tipping point in July 2026, driven by the rapid scaling of Real-World Asset (RWA) tokenization. Major global investment banks, custodial entities, and asset managers are actively shifting sovereign debt, commercial paper, and private fund shares onto permissioned distributed ledgers. Recent industry data confirms that the aggregate market capitalization of tokenized treasury products and private credit funds has surged past major milestones, illustrating that ledger-based settlement is no longer experimental, but core financial infrastructure.
The fundamental value proposition of asset tokenization rests on operational efficiency, continuous liquidity, and automated compliance execution. By embedding regulatory checks, investor accreditation limits, and automated coupon distributions directly into smart contract code, financial institutions eliminate vast amounts of manual back-office reconciliation. Furthermore, fractionalized ownership structures allow high-value asset classes—such as prime commercial real estate and private equity funds—to be split into accessible units, significantly expanding liquidity pools and enabling real-time collateral optimization.
A key catalyst behind this institutional momentum is the establishment of comprehensive regulatory clarity across major financial jurisdictions. The implementation of standardized digital asset frameworks in the United States and Europe has provided institutional compliance officers with the legal certainty required to deploy capital on-chain. As a result, premier custodian banks are now offering unified digital asset custody, seamlessly bridging traditional securities depositories with programmable ledger ecosystems.
Looking forward, the maturation of tokenized assets will continue to transform secondary market trading and treasury management. Corporate treasurers can now yield-optimize idle cash in real time by moving into tokenized money market instruments that settle instantaneously on a 24/7 basis. To remain competitive, financial leaders must ensure their institutional architectures are interoperable with modern digital ledger protocols, positioning their organizations at the forefront of modern capital market efficiency.
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