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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Yesterday, the American Securities Association (ASA) and Citadel Securities filed a brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit challenging the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) approval of a Consolidated Audit Trail (CAT) Order.
“This case raises important questions about the validity of a significant order of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (Commission or SEC) that threatens to impose billions of dollars in costs on the financial-services industry (and the investors they represent) to implement a massive, unprecedented government surveillance system that will collect personal information on every American who trades in the U.S. securities markets—all without the approval of, or any funding from, Congress,” wrote lawyers for ASA and Citadel Securities in the brief.
“If the Commission wants to build its multi-billion-dollar surveillance system on the backs of the American investors it is surveilling, the Exchange Act makes clear that it at least owes them a good explanation why that arrangement is ‘reasonable’ and ‘equitable.’ Yet far from providing one, the Order abandons the SEC’s statutory obligation and pledged commitment to undertake an equitable allocation of CAT costs without even acknowledging it is doing so. That is an independent ground for vacatur,” wrote the lawyers on the allocation of cost.
In October 2023, ASA and Citadel Securities jointly petitioned the Eleventh Circuit to review the SEC’s implementation of the Consolidated Audit Trail, in response to widespread investor concerns about transparency, governance, costs, and data privacy.
Read the American Securities Association and Citadel Securities’ brief here.
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About the American Securities Association
American Securities Association, based in Washington, DC, represents the retail and institutional capital markets interests of regional financial services firms who provide Main Street businesses with access to capital and advise hardworking Americans how to create and preserve wealth. ASA’s mission is to promote trust and confidence among investors, facilitate capital formation, and support efficient and competitively balanced capital markets. This mission advances financial independence, stimulates job creation, and increases prosperity. The ASA has a geographically diverse membership of almost one hundred members that spans the Heartland, Southwest, Southeast, Atlantic, and Pacific Northwest regions of the United States.