Wall Street’s top regulator on Wednesday criticized two recent European laws on companies’ disclosures of their environmental, social and governance impacts, underscoring the shift in U.S. financial regulation since President Donald Trump took office.
In an address to an event held in Paris by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paul Atkins, chair of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said the laws could impose costs on investors and called on European authorities to focus on promoting free enterprise instead.
“I have significant concerns with the prescriptive nature of these laws and their burdens on U.S. companies, the costs of which are potentially passed on to American investors and customers,” Atkins said, according to prepared remarks.
Though Atkins noted recent changes to ease the laws’ burdens, he said more work was necessary, adding that Europe should focus on cutting firms’ reporting obligations “rather than pursuing ends that are unrelated to the economic success of companies” or their shareholders.
The European Union last year adopted a law, the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, requiring larger companies to verify whether their supply chains use forced labor or cause environmental damage, and to address this if they do.
However, this was watered down to win the support of some EU members.
Separately, the European Commission in February proposed looser environmental and corporate sustainability standards under the EU’s corporate sustainability reporting directive, which requires companies to disclose information about their environmental and social impacts to investors and consumers.
In a three-way deal involving carriers, underwriters, holding companies and more, catastrophe-focused managing general underwriter SageSure announced it will acquire the managing general agent for Florida-based Olympus Insurance Co.
At the same time, the parent company for SageSure’s carrier partners Auros and Interboro Insurance will take over Olympus Insurance Co., the companies said early Wednesday.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed. SageSure, headquartered in New Jersey, said the move will expand the firm’s presence in the improving Florida market. As of the first quarter this year, Olympus held some 80,200 policies, mostly for more-affluent homeowners, state regulator data shows. The combined companies will now have more than 130,000 policies in Florida and about $700 million in gross written premium, SageSure noted.