Nagy to testify before Congressional committee on stock trading reforms

Maurer School of Law Professor Donna Nagy will testify before the U.S. Congress Committee on House Administration tomorrow, April 7, in Washington, D.C.

The hearing, “Examining Stock Trading Reforms for Congress,” begins at 9:10 a.m. in the Longworth House Office Building and will be simultaneously livestreamed here.

Nagy, the C. Ben Dutton Professor of Business Law and an internationally recognized expert in securities litigation and the law of insider trading, will be sharing her research about government ethics and financial conflicts of interest. She will be testifying on her own behalf in support of federal legislation that would prohibit members of Congress from owning the securities of individual publicly traded companies as well as certain other investments that would likely conflict with their official duties.

It was nearly 10 years ago to the day when President Barack Obama signed the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, requiring enhanced financial disclosures and creating new securities transaction reporting rules for members of Congress, certain members of their family, and their staff.  The Act also made absolutely clear that a member of Congress who trades securities based on material nonpublic government information would be violating the federal securities law’s insider trading prohibition. Nagy testified in both the House and Senate hearings that preceded the STOCK Act’s passage, but she believed then, as she does now, that it did not go far enough in preventing lawmakers from profiting off their congressional service.

Nagy’s scholarship in the areas of securities litigation and insider trading has been widely cited. She is the co-author of Ferrara on Insider Trading and The Wall and the forthcoming fifth edition of Securities Litigation, Enforcement, and Compliance: Cases and Materials as well as the author of more than 20 published law review articles and book chapters.

In addition to Nagy, the Committee will hear testimony from Liz Hempowicz, director of public policy for the Project on Government Oversight; Jennifer J. Schulp, director of financial regulation studies at the CATO Institute; Donald Sherman, senior vice president and chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington; and Jacob Straus, a specialist on Congress for the Congressional Research Service.