On Friday, February 25, 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed its latest round of GameStop rule proposals. In addition to enhanced public disclosures of short sales by institutional investors, the Commission announced a 30-day extension of the comment period on its sweeping securities lending disclosure proposal, Rule 10c-1, and technical amendments to the "consolidated audit tape" regulations. These separate, but related, disclosure proposals may well be the start of a much broader and far-ranging regulatory response to the kind of market disruptions epitomized by the Gamestop event.  

The SEC has proposed a radical and potentially very costly reporting regime for securities finance transactions to increase transparency "to brokers, dealers, and investors."  While there is no requirement for the Commission to discuss or examine the economic effects of regulatory alternatives, in this case, they have included some alternatives it could consider to the reporting structure they propose, presumably to focus potential commenters on specific ideas they want explored. The Commission has seemingly outsourced the economic analysis of its suggested alternatives to industry commenters. Also, by doing so, the Commission has hinted it is interested in hearing about well-supported alternatives, and may even be inviting counter-proposals. 

On November 18, 2021, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed broad disclosure rules intended to "provide transparency in the securities lending market." As directed by the Dodd-Frank Act, the Commission proposed these rules to (1) supplement publicly available information, (2) close data gaps in the securities lending market, (3) minimize information asymmetries between market participants, and (5) provide market participants with access to pricing and other material information.

Further, the data elements proposed to be collected are intended to provide regulators with the information necessary to perform effective market surveillance. "This proposal would bring securities lending out of the dark," according to SEC Chair Gary Gensler.