The SEC’s recent decision to take disclosure of political activities off the SEC’s agenda is a policy mistake, as it ignores the best research on the point, described below, and perpetuates a key loophole in the investor-relevant disclosure rules, allowing large companies to omit material information about the politically inflected risks they run with other people’s money. It is also a political mistake, as it repudiates the 600,000+ investors who have written to the SEC personally to ask it to adopt a rule requiring such disclosure, and will let entrenched business interests focus their lobbying solely on watering down regulation mandated under the Dodd-Frank Act and the 2012 securities law statute, rather than having also to work to influence a disclosure regime.
The connection between political activity and investor concerns is directly reflected in the Wall Street Journal’s own editorializing on the topic, e.g., here, where the WSJ repeats one study’s finding that political activity can increase shareholder returns by 2 to 5% per year. The WSJ does not acknowledge that other studies reach different conclusions—that political activity can be harmful, and its effects vary significantly from firm to firm and over time—but regardless of which study’s results are correct, the materiality of such activity to shareholders is clear, even by the lights of the WSJ.