- Free Strategy Session: (847) 906-3460 Tap Here to Call Us
Lisa Braganca in CFO Brew on dangers facing CFOs.
Lisa Braganca was recently interviewed for CFO Brew about the risks of CFOs lowering their guards because they perceive the current Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement agenda to lean toward increasing deregulation. In the article (selections below), Lisa explained that not only could the SEC ramp up enforcement in future administrations before the statute of limitations expires for actions taken today, but states might increase their own enforcement activity in the interim.
By Natasha Piñon
Amid the SEC’s slowdown in enforcement actions, CFOs need to tread carefully.
There’s a new sheriff at the securities regulator—but that doesn’t mean it’s the Wild West for CFOs.
“Tread carefully,” Lisa Bragança told us, addressing CFOs. “Don’t jump to conclude that just because something has changed at the SEC level, that it means you should move to that disclosure regime. You may still have obligations under state [rules] and other organizations.”
“This is a time that CFOs definitely need to be careful…to make sure that they don’t just go ‘Whee!’” she added. “It’s a more complicated time, because we will have these different views of what needs to be done, disclosed, and what a fiduciary is required to do.”
State of mind. In the years to come, Bragança thinks it’s possible that while federal regulation ebbs, state-by-state regulation will increasingly come into focus, with states stepping in to take a potentially more rigorous approach.
“Typically, state regulators defer to what the Feds are doing,” she said. “It’s not clear that that’s going to be the paradigm this coming year or in the coming years.”
“You cannot just look at what is going on at the very top, at the federal level,” Bragança said. Even in the most extreme what-if cases—like, say, the president saying fraud cases are fully a thing of the past—“that would not change the states, and it would not change the requirements that apply to CFOs as accountants,” Bragança noted.
“Maybe in a decade, the states will follow, and all the other organizations will be in perfect sync with a new regulatory regime from the federal government,” she acknowledged. “But usually these things happen more slowly, and there is more time for consensus and then you don’t have those discontinuities.”