After months of vacancies, Chairman Christopher Cox finally has a full slate of commissioners to work with at the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The final two vacant seats were filled last week as Luis Aguilar, who was nominated for a term to expire in 2010, and Troy A. Paredes, who was nominated for a term expiring in 2013, were sworn in.
Including Cox, who is also a commissioner, the full five SEC commissioner seats are now filled as last month, Elisse Walter, who was nominated for a term expiring in 2012, was also sworn in.
The full bench comes not a moment too soon.
Both Paredes and Aguilar were sworn in just in time to sit in on Mondays SEC roundtable discussion about IFRS standards, as the pressure mounts for U.S. companies to utilize the international accounting standards rather than U.S. GAAP.
The SEC commissioners have a slew of other issues s to weigh in on as well, including the future of the credit rating agencies in light of the SECs findings of conflicts of interest at the big three agencies that contributed to the fallout in the CDO and residential mortgage backed securities markets. And the SEC will have to respond to calls to overhaul the U.S. financial regulatory system by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.
