In this episode of Regulatory Oversight, co-host Stephen Piepgrass sits down with Jay Dubow and Ghillaine Reid, co-leaders of the firm’s Securities Investigation + Enforcement practice, to explore how the SEC’s enforcement agenda is evolving under Chairman Paul Atkins and what that means for public companies, financial institutions, and their executives.
On May 12, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued a significant interpretive letter confirming that Fidelity Digital Assets, National Association (the recently converted national trust bank formerly known as Fidelity Digital Assets Service, LLC) is not required to hold state money transmitter licenses to conduct its federally authorized activities. The OCC concluded that the National Bank Act preempts any state money transmitter licensing requirement as applied to a national bank.
Federal regulators recently took two coordinated steps that significantly shift expectations for how lenders and banks treat non‑work authorized individuals and their employers. On June 5, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB or Bureau) issued a formal statement on how immigration status should factor into ability‑to‑repay determinations under the Truth in Lending Act (TILA) and Regulation Z. On the same day, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), jointly with the federal banking agencies and in coordination with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), released a detailed advisory on fraud, payroll schemes, and money laundering risks associated with the unlawful employment of non-work authorized persons, including specific guidance regarding the use of Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) and Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs).
On May 19, 2026, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed rule amendments that would significantly simplify executive compensation disclosure requirements for many public companies. The proposed rules would split public companies into large accelerated filers and non-accelerated filers. Non-accelerated filers would be subject to scaled executive compensation disclosure rules, similar to those presently applicable to emerging growth companies (EGCs), and they would not be required to conduct Say-on-Pay and related advisory votes. The SEC estimates that approximately 81% of public companies would be non-accelerated filers subject to these scaled disclosure rules. The remaining public companies would be large accelerated filers, representing the majority (about 93.5%) of public float, and they would remain subject to substantially the same executive compensation disclosure rules that currently apply to large accelerated filers.
On May 29, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC or Commission) took a set of actions that together open a path for digital asset perpetual contracts to trade on registered U.S. platforms by classifying them as futures, rather than swaps, for the first time. The Commission approved the first such product, issued a policy statement on how it will review future perpetual contracts, and its staff issued separate guidance addressing foreign-listed perpetuals and customer margin and 24/7 trading. Perpetual contracts, often called perpetual futures, are futures-style instruments without a fixed expiration date, and they have until now traded almost entirely on offshore crypto trading platforms.
ATLANTA –Troutman Pepper Locke advised Georgia Banking Company, Inc. (GBC), a community-focused financial institution headquartered in Atlanta, and parent company of Georgia Banking Company, in its merger with Tandem Bancorp, Inc., the parent company of Tandem Bank, and in the related merger of their respective banking subsidiaries. For more information, see the press release.
On May 22, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Board of Directors approved a notice of proposed rulemaking to extend Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) and sanctions compliance standards to the permitted payment stablecoin issuers (PPSIs) it supervises under the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act (the GENIUS Act). These GENIUS Act BSA and sanctions compliance rules for PPSIs were recently proposed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), as we discussed in a prior advisory.
On May 22, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced a settled enforcement action against Foot Locker, Inc. for using separation agreements that required departing employees to waive their right to receive SEC whistleblower awards, in violation of Exchange Act Rule 21F-17(a). The case is noteworthy not only for its specific facts, but also because it reflects clear continuity in the SEC’s whistleblower-enforcement agenda: after bringing a significant number of Rule 21F-17 cases under prior Chair Gary Gensler, this Foot Locker order is the first such action under Chair Paul Atkins and signals that the current Commission will continue to prioritize whistleblower protections.
James Stevens, partner and co-leader of Troutman Pepper Locke’s Financial Services Industry Group, was quoted in a recent S&P Global Market Intelligence article by Rica Dela Cruz, Lauren Seay, and Joe Mantone, “CAMELS overhaul could serve as a catalyst for US bank M&A.” The article discusses the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council’s proposed revisions to the CAMELS rating system, which would shift regulatory emphasis toward an institution’s financial condition and risk profile and reduce the weight historically given to the “Management” component. Commenting on the M&A implications, James noted that lower CAMELS ratings on either the buy or sell side can hold back deals and other growth initiatives, and that raising ratings under a more targeted framework “could encourage M&A” as well as branching and other expansion efforts.