Warren Calls on Atkins to Disclosure Buyer of Lucrative Consulting Business
Letter follows Atkins’s failure to disclose buyer after Warren pressed him to commit to do so at nomination hearing
“Avoiding the appearance of impropriety goes hand-in-hand with your ability to effectively regulate securities markets”
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, sent a letter to Paul Atkins, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), calling on him to disclose who he sold Patomak Global partners to, as well as pressing for additional records on other investments that he divested from since becoming SEC Chair.
“For sixteen years prior to your confirmation as Chair, you led Patomak as founder and CEO. In this role, you worked with several clients that are regulated by the SEC, including banks, credit unions, fintechs, derivative clearing organizations, futures commission merchants, insurance companies, banking-as-a-service firms, and non-bank consumer lenders,” wrote Ranking Member Warren. “Your financial ties to the industries you now regulate raise serious concerns about your ability to avoid conflicts of interest. Your impartiality will be critical in upholding the nation’s securities laws and promoting trust in our capital markets–which is why, on March 20, 2025, you signed an ethics agreement committing to divesting certain interests.”
The Ranking Member continued: “According to publicly available OGE filings, you have only provided documentation confirming your divestments to date. This information does not disclose the buyer or sale amount. It is imperative that you also disclose who the buyers are and how much they paid, to ensure that they are not people who are just buying access to the chair of the SEC.”
“Further, even though disclosure of at least some of your remaining divestments is not required on public OGE filings, detailed information regarding your divestments is essential to ensuring that your conflicts of interest have been mitigated,” the Ranking Member concluded.
Ranking Member Warren requested information regarding the status of Atkins’s divestments by August 18, 2025.
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