As has been rumored, the SEC announced today that William H. Hinman will be the new director for the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance.
Mr. Hinman, who recently retired as a securities and corporate finance partner from the Silicon Valley office of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP, has advised in some of the larger IPOs in the technology section in recent history such as Alibaba, Google and Facebook. Mr. Hinman replaces Keith Higgins, the former director of Corp Fin who left in January.
Given newly appointed SEC Chair Clayton’s stated desire to substantially reduce regulation and burdens to increase the IPO market, hiring Mr. Hinman seems to align with Chair Clayton’s vision. The number of public companies has decreased 37% since the high water mark set in 1997. While there may be many reasons for the decrease in IPOs and in the number of public companies, overly burdensome disclosure obligations certainly ranks among the top reasons (see conflict minerals, pay ratio, CD&A, XBRL . . . ).
While I doubt we will be going back to 20 page Form 10-Ks, let’s hope that the new Chair and Corp Fin director can jettison some of the most burdensome and least effective disclosure, that they can help make the public capital markets for potential small- and mid-cap issuers more robust, and that the SEC can move forward with other important initiatives.