PlainBillCongress, translated.Legislation. Context. Public interest.Read twice and referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
Congressional Research Service
Version 00 · Introduced in Senate · Mar 17, 2016
Brokaw Act
This bill directs the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to amend specified regulations to reflect a revision the bill makes to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 reducing from 10 to 2 business days the deadline for disclosing to the SEC any acquisition of a direct or indirect short interest in an equity security of a certain kind of voting class that results in a direct or indirect short interest representing more than 5% of that class.
The mandatory disclosures of short interests shall apply to:
Showing the opening paragraphs of the official summary.
any class of equity security which must be registered,
certain equity securities of an insurance company, and
any equity security issued by a closed-end investment company registered under the Investment Company Act of 1940.
The bill deems a person as having a "short interest in a security" if the person has the opportunity, either directly or indirectly, to profit from, or share in any profit derived from any decrease in the value of the security (including a derivative instrument, or a performance-related fee).
The bill deems a person to have a short interest in a security if the person creates or uses certain instruments, including a trust, proxy, power of attorney, pooling arrangement, or any other contract, arrangement, or device, to divest the person of a short interest in a security or to prevent the vesting of a short interest as part of a plan to evade the reporting requirements of the Act.
The bill declares that, with specified exceptions, in calculating the number of shares in which a person has a short interest, regardless of the form of the short interest, all securities of the same class shall be aggregated.
People & committees
Sen. Baldwin, Tammy [D-WI] · D–WI
Legislative record
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Read twice and referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
Introduced in Senate
Primary sources
Text links open the official source. We currently store references to these documents.
Source last updated: Aug 12, 2025. Consult Congress.gov for the current record.
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