Washington – Ivan G. Seidenberg, Chairman of Business Roundtable and Chairman and CEO of Verizon Communications said, “Business Roundtable adamantly opposes the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010 in its current form, which not only ignores the diversity of U.S. businesses, but harms their ability to innovate, create jobs and grow the economy.

“Business Roundtable supports meaningful reform, but we cannot support the current version of the Restoring American Financial Stability Act. We urge the Senate to continue working on legislation to improve U.S. financial regulation while holding harmless the thousands of businesses who suffered directly from the financial crisis and had no role in its creation,” noted Seidenberg.

Alexander Cutler, Chair of Business Roundtable's Corporate Leadership Initiative and Chairman and CEO of Eaton Corporation added, “While our member CEOs have long championed the need to reform financial regulatory systems to reduce risk and promote stable economic growth, we strongly oppose the provision that would create a new federal right granting the Securities and Exchange Commission authority to issue rules on proxy access. This provision would handcuff directors and boards, and exacerbate the short-term focus that is now seen as one of the root causes of the financial crisis. This unprecedented intrusion into areas historically reserved for the states could have dire adverse consequences for America’s more than 12,000 non-financial public companies, and allow a small, discrete minority of shareholders to disrupt companies’ operations.

“We are also unable to support the current provision that takes a one-size-fits-all-approach to derivatives regulation; this fails to provide a clear exemption for end-users, who employ derivatives as a tool to manage everyday risks, such as fluctuating currency exchange rates, interest rates and commodity prices,” concluded Cutler.