On September 4, 2025, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, part of the Office of Management and Budget, within the Executive Office of the President, released the Spring 2025 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, reporting on potential rulemaking topics that administrative agencies, including the SEC, will consider. With respect to the SEC, the Spring 2025 agenda is the first agenda issued under SEC Chair Paul Atkins and presents a very different list of potential rulemaking topics compared to the Fall 2024 agenda issued under the prior SEC Chair.

The Spring 2025 agenda reflects the SEC’s regulatory focus on crypto assets as well as a number of deregulatory initiatives broadly seeking to alleviate compliance burdens and facilitate capital formation, including potential rule proposals to rationalize disclosure practices, to simplify pathways for raising capital and for investor access to private businesses, and to expand the availability of certain exemptive rules. The Spring 2025 agenda also reflects the SEC’s recent withdrawal of 14 prior rule proposals issued during the prior administration, including proposals related to cybersecurity requirements for funds and investment advisers, ESG disclosures by funds and advisers, outsourcing by advisers, safeguarding advisory client assets, and conflicts of interest in the use of artificial intelligence and similar technologies by advisers and broker-dealers, among others.

The topics in the Spring 2025 agenda are categorized into one of three rulemaking stages: prerule stage, proposed rule stage and final rule stage. Certain notable potential rulemaking topics are highlighted below.

Prerule Stage. Matters identified in the prerule stage include seeking public comment with respect to eligibility for foreign private issuer status and potential comprehensive reform to the Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) regulatory reporting and oversight regime.

Proposed Rule Stage. Matters identified in the proposed rule stage include the following:

• Several crypto asset-related topics, including proposed rules and/or rule amendments related to: (1) the offer and sale of crypto assets; (2) the trading of crypto assets on alternative trading systems and national securities exchanges; (3) the custody of advisory client and fund assets, including crypto assets; (4) the regulation of transfer agents, including rules related to crypto assets and the use of distributed ledger technology by transfer agents; and (5) the broker-dealer financial responsibility, recordkeeping and reporting rules to address the application of these rules to crypto assets;
• Rationalizing disclosure practices to facilitate material disclosure by companies and shareholders’ access to that information;
• Additional initiatives to update disclosure and reporting requirements to reduce compliance burdens, including rule proposals to modernize the shelf registration process, to amend the Form N-PORT portfolio-holding reporting requirements applicable to registered funds, and to modernize the shareholder proposal requirements under Rule 14a-8 under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934;
• Reducing the compliance burden of smaller regulated entities, including rule proposals addressing issuers categorized as “Emerging Growth Companies” as well as “smaller entities” definitions under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and Investment Advisers Act of 1940;
• Expanding the availability of certain exemptive rules, including Rule 144 under the Securities Act of 1933 regarding restricted securities and Rule 17a-7 under the Investment Company Act regarding cross trading; and
• Simplifying pathways for raising capital and for investor access to private businesses.

Final Rule Stage. Matters identified in the final rule stage include a rule proposal under the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) that would impose new customer identification program (CIP) requirements on registered investment advisers and exempt reporting advisers, as previously summarized here.

The full list of potential rulemaking topics is available here. Chairman Atkins’ statement on the Spring 2025 agenda is available here.