Viewers who caught President Barack Obama on television signing the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act a couple of weeks ago were watching the culmination of a year’s worth of work for a native Toledoan.
Reagan McKee Anderson, vice president of governmental affairs for the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), grew up in South Toledo. Now she is a mainstay on Capitol Hill, lobbying for business advancement.
“What it comes down to is me being able to take rather complex issues relating to the financial services industry and you’ve got five minutes to explain something to a member of Congress,” Anderson said.
She harnessed that skill to push pieces of the act that the NYSE prioritized. One bill, the Onramp for Emerging Growth Companies, allows companies seeking to go public up to five years to comply with regulations such as a portion of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that includes a requirement mandating an auditor’s attestation report on internal controls.
The bill also allows companies to provide reduced executive compensation disclosures, lifting a restriction within the Dodd-Frank Act.
The other bill, the Small Company CapitalFormation Act of 2011, permits companies to raise up to $50 million in public markets without registering with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The present limit is $5 million.
Anderson said this amount was so small that companies were not using it and she sees the new bill as an opportunity for business to “test the waters” before they launch an initial public offering.
The act passed 73 to 26 in the Senate andObama signed it April 5. Dissenters have argued that the bills lift the reins on transparency, enabling less disclosure is risky for investorsand
that soliciting the public for private investments could lead to more fraud. Anderson, however, is pleased with the act.
“It was such a great honor to be in the Rose Garden, standing next to the CEO of the stock exchange, a company that is recognized around the world, and to watch the president sign into law something I’ve worked on every day for the past year,” she said.
Anderson didn’t always see herself as a future stock exchange expert. She graduated from Notre Dame Academy in 1995 and attended Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism for a magazine journalism degree.
After briefly working for a public relations firm in Toledo that no longer exists, Andersonmoved to Georgia to assume the role of director of congressional affairs for the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta.
After completing nearly four years of work there, she became a legislative assistant for Mel Martinez, then U.S. Senator from Florida. She served as his liaison for the Senate banking committee. About a year and a half after she started that job, she took a position at Fannie Mae for two and a half years, followed by an associate vice president position at the Private Equity Council.
She has worked for the NYSE since 2009.
Anderson said being a strong writer was helpful to her entire career.
“I knew in college I was interested in journalism because I love to write,” she said. “You have to be able to write.”
Amid the commutes from New York and D.C., the long hours traipsing around Capitol Hill and the various Congresspeople and legislative staff members with whom she wrangles on a daily basis, she has not forgotten Toledo.
Anderson doesn’t come home enough, she said. But when she does, she always hits Grumpy’s in Downtown Toledo.
“I just feel like the pace of life here in D.C. is so fast; it is so political and in Toledo you cango out to dinner with some people and have real
lives,” she said. “They don’t live in this bubble of D.C. people and are doing much more interesting things than what we’re doing here.”
Anderson grew up in south Toledo.
“Taking our dog for a walk in Walbridge Park and going to Wixey was like heaven,” she said.
