The Securities and Exchange Commission doesn’t just enforce the rules that govern Wall Street. When asked, it often grants individual companies exemptions from the rules. But companies that win those special breaks often fail to comply with the conditions that come with them, the SEC’s inspector general said in a report released Thursday.
What’s more, the agency has no formalized process for monitoring whether companies live up to their end of the bargain, the report said. Though the agency routinely inspects financial firms, “only in rare cases” did the examiners focus on that question, the report said.