On Friday, Financial Planning, a news publication that caters to wealth management professionals, reported how NLPC — after winning several anti-DEI concessions from companies including American Express, Deere & Company, and Goldman Sachs — has become critical of the Securities and Exchange Commission under Chairman Paul Atkins (pictured above, right, at the White House), over concerns related to limitations on shareholder rights such as proxy voting and public disclosure filings.
On the one hand, conservatives can point to moves toward the “best interests of shareholder returns” and avoiding “divisive politics that had no bearing on running the business responsibly,” according to Paul Chesser, the director of the Corporate Integrity Project at the National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), a conservative advocacy group that successfully urged Goldman and other firms to alter their board selection policies.
On the other, the group has found common cause with left-leaning groups that argue the SEC is going too far under Chairman Paul Atkins in providing more leeway for companies to restrict shareholders’ rights. Among other methods of communicating its opposition, the NLPC criticized the SEC’s proxy shifts and shareholder filing constraints in a meeting with Commissioner Hester Peirce, Chesser noted. The group characterized the current SEC as “Where Billionaires and Their Woke Corporate Allies Find Protection” in a blog post in late January.
“They don’t have any sympathy for us, as far as we can tell,” he told Financial Planning. You have to participate in the debate or engage in the battlefield, if you will, as it is — not as you wish it to be. So that’s one reason why we do what we do. … Our agenda on DEI largely aligns with President Trump‘s agenda, but now the SEC leadership that he has put in place is working against that agenda.”
Read the full article at Financial Planning.
