Friday, June 25, 2010

House-Senate Conf. Comm. Agrees On Fin Reg Reform Bill (Dodd-Frank Act), For Vote Next Week

After pulling a 20-hour marathon session, the House and Senate conference committees agreed early this morning on the Financial Regulatory Reform Bill, which will be voted on by the full House and Senate next week, and if passed, sent on to President Barack Obama to sign into law. Here are some of the early morning reports on major news websites:

Congress Reaches Deal on Financial Bill (Edward Wyatt, NYT)
U.S. Lawmakers Reach Accord on New Finance Rules (Damian Paletta, WSJ)
House, Senate Leaders Finalize Details of Sweeping Financial Overhaul (Brady Dennis, WashPost)
U.S. Lawmakers Approve Financial Overhaul; Marathon Session Produces $19 bn levy and Softening of Volcker Rule (Tom Braithwaite, Francesco Guerrera and Justin Baer, FT)

As to timing of when the bill could become law, as noted in the WashPost article cited above:

The dawn compromise set up a potential vote in both houses of Congress next week
that could send the landmark legislation to President Obama by July 4.
Proposed Name of Law: Dodd/Frank Act
Damian Paletta reported in the WSJ Blog this morning that the legislation, if signed into law, would be called the Dodd/Frank Act.

In a statement issued today, Sen. Dodd, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, said:

Over the past two years, America has faced the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. Millions of Americans have lost their homes, their jobs, their savings and their faith in our economy.”

“The American people have called on us to set clear rules of the road for the financial industry to prevent a repeat of the financial collapse that cost so many so dearly.”

“This bill meets that challenge.”
Check Financial Executives International's website, www.financialexecutives.org, and this blog www.financialexecutives.org/blog, for updates on legislation, accounting and tax news news, practical research reports from our research affiliate, the Financial Executives Research Foundation www.ferf.org, and more.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Edith,

The conference committee just published the text of the act as agreed by the house-senate conference committee on the Website of the Committee on Financial Services of the House.

Section 989G includes a permanent exemption of non-accelerated filers from section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In addition, the SEC has to conduct a study how to reduce compliance burdens for issuers with market caps between 75 and 250 million dollars and to assess whether those measures could induce issuers to make IPOs on US securities exchanges.

Section 989I requires the GAO to study the effects of this exemption, inclduing whether exempt issuers have more restatements, have a higher cost of capital, whether investors have a different confidence in the financial statements of exempt issuers, whether the exemption should be disclosed to investors, costs and benefits of voluntary section 404(b) audits by exempt issuers

While approval in the house is relatively certain given the majority of democrats in the house, the conference committee compromise needs a qualified majority in the senate to avoid endless debates through filibusters and thus may need minimal bipartisan support.

Best regards

Georg