- October 28, 1975 Swearing-in ceremony for SEC Chairman Roderick M. Hills
The SEC began to move more aggressively to promote a central market by establishing the Advisory Committee on the Implementation of the Central Market System. The committee included several members from the securities industry. Frederick Wittemore, a Morgan Stanley partner, expressed his support, calling it a "positive step" and the "beginning of a new responsiveness." (27)
By 1974, the SEC had begun to reassert its authority by renewing the approach toward regulation that the agency had followed during the most successful of its 40-year history. Strong staff analysis, clear-headed recommendations, and cooperation with the securities industry, where possible, once again became the approach of the agency. Over the next two years, as Congress pushed in one direction or another, the SEC responded with a renewed sense of purpose to lead the forces of market regulation.
SEC Chairman Roderick Hills, who succeeded Garrett, cautioned that "somebody else - the Congress, the economy - may take the plate away from us… and some direction has to emerge" regarding a wide variety of issues.(28) SEC staff examined a host of new issues, including ties between institutions and brokers, the actions of accountants relating to financial disclosure, the full elimination of fixed rate commissions, the role of corporate boards in properly governing corporate behavior and public disclosure, the problem of fraud and insider trading, and broad ways to ensure market competition while protecting the stability of the securities industry.
(27) "S.E.C. Names Group on Central Market", The New York Times, May 11 1974, 43
(28) Robert M. Smith, "S.E.C.'s Chief Grapples With Disclosure Rules, Among Many Problems," The New York Times, January 4, 1976, NES33
(Government Records)
