The new
Chair of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX),
announced that former Chair Spencer Bachus (R-AL) will serve as the Committee’s
Chairman Emeritus in the 113th Congress. As
Chairman Emeritus, Rep. Bachus will continue in a senior role on a panel where
he has served as Chairman for the past two years and as Ranking Member for the
previous four. During his chairmanship, Rep. Bachus guided major bipartisan
legislation through Congress, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act
Noting that
members on both sides of the aisle have tremendous respect and
admiration for Chairman Bachus, Chairman Hensarling said that conferring the
status of Chairman Emeritus is a recognition of his many contributions and the
fact that he has so much more to contribute to the Committee. Members of the
Financial Services Committee will continue to benefit from the wisdom, counsel
and leadership of the Chairman Emeritus, added Chairman Hensarling.
In
the 112th Congress, Chairman Bachus championed the idea of an
SRO for investment advisers as the most comprehensive and streamlined approach
to address the regulatory weakness. To that end, Chairman Bachus and Rep.
Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) co-sponsored bi-partisan legislation, the Investment
Advisers Oversight Act, H.R. 4624, to establish an SRO for investment advisers.
Noting that SEC-registered investment advisers are generally inspected once
every decade, Chairman Bachus said that investor protection requires more
timely oversight of investment advisers. He noted that H.R. 4624 closes a
glaring regulatory gap that undermines investor confidence. One of the tenors
of the Dodd-Frank Act is that the inadequate oversight of investment advisers
is a weakness of the current financial regulatory system, he noted.