Crowd-funding rules a very high priority, SEC's White says

The Securities and Exchange Commission is moving to propose rules that would allow companies to raise money through equity crowd-funding and more lightly regulated offerings, Chairman Mary Jo White said. The regulator considers it a “very high priority to get those rulemakings done” and hopes to do so this year, White said at the Bloomberg Markets 50 Summit in New York Tuesday. “Those are things we are devoting maximum resources to, not neglecting everything else we have to do with our limited resources,” White said of the rules required under last year's Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. White also vowed the agency would eventually adopt a June 5 proposal to add new restrictions to money-market mutual funds and said the agency is making “lots of progress” toward finishing the Volcker rule, which bans federally insured banks from short-term trading for their own account. “It is a hard, complex rulemaking but lots of progress is being made,” White said in the interview with Bloomberg Television's Peter Cook. (Bloomberg News)