SEC Chair comments on insider trading

SEC Chair Gary Gensler joins 'Influencers with Andy Serwer' to discuss insider trading on Wall st.

Video Transcript

ANDY SERWER: "The Wall Street Journal" has reported the SEC is looking into recent sales by Tesla CEO Elon Musk and his brother Kimball, whether they violated insider trading rules. I know you can't comment on a possible--

GARY GENSLER: I'm glad you said that for your viewers. I'm not sure where you're headed.

ANDY SERWER: Oh, I'm going somewhere. I'm going somewhere, Chair Gensler.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

GARY GENSLER: I'm not going to be able to comment.

ANDY SERWER: --on a possible investigation. But have you talked about the need for stronger insider trading rules generally? And how big an issue has this been in your first year? Is insider trading a problem that you're focusing on?

GARY GENSLER: It is. It is from our enforcement side, our terrific enforcement efforts headed up by Director Graywall, Sanjay Wadhwa, the whole team, just terrific team. But it's also from the policy side. We've even done something about insiders.

When can corporate executives sell their shares? And there was something put in place about 20 years ago, which was called a safe harbor, if you might. And we came on board and thought, there's too many gaps in this area. And senior management might be trading stock when they're in receipt of material non-public information.

And we put this proposal out in-- I think it was December or so-- about these so-called 10B51 plans. And so both from really vigorous enforcement, but also from the policy side about insiders, we're taking it up in both ways. And I think it's a really important part.

But this comes down to trust in our capital markets and trust that there's a level playing field, that when you're in the markets, that somebody doesn't have an information advantage from material non-public information.