The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu The leading online blog in the fields of corporate governance and financial regulation. Thu, 04 Jun 2026 11:32:46 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.5.8 https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/cropped-photography-4-e1706898544564-1-32x32.png Shining a Light on Expenditures of Shareholder Money – The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu 32 32 Shining a Light on Expenditures of Shareholder Money https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/03/11/shining-a-light-on-expenditures-of-shareholder-money/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=shining-a-light-on-expenditures-of-shareholder-money https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/03/11/shining-a-light-on-expenditures-of-shareholder-money/#comments Sun, 11 Mar 2012 15:08:32 +0000 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/corpgov/?p=26702?d=20120311100832EDT Editor’s Note: Luis A. Aguilar is a Commissioner at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This post is based on remarks by Commissioner Aguilar at the Practising Law Institute’s SEC Speaks in 2012 Program; the full remarks, including footnotes, are available here. The views expressed in the post are those of Commissioner Aguilar and do not necessarily reflect those of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the other Commissioners, or the Staff. Work from the Program on Corporate Governance about corporate political spending includes Corporate Political Speech: Who Decides? by Lucian Bebchuk and Robert Jackson, discussed on the Forum here. A committee of law professors co-chaired by Bebchuk and Jackson submitted a rulemaking petition to the SEC concerning corporate political spending; that petition is discussed here.

The Commission’s core mission is to protect investors. William O. Douglas, a former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who went on to serve as a Supreme Court Justice, described the SEC’s role by contrasting it with a well-represented industry. Chairman Douglas said: “We’ve got broker’s advocates, we’ve got exchange advocates, we’ve got investment banker advocates, and we [the SEC] are the investor’s advocate.”

Not much has changed since Chairman Douglas spoke those words at his first press conference as SEC Chairman in 1937. The industry, with its lobbyists and spokespeople, remains the loudest voice – in fact, one could say that things have gotten much worse. As a result, investors need an advocate today more than ever.

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