SEC Made ‘Outrageously’ Hard Climate Proposal, Ex-Director Says

The SEC’s climate disclosure plan would bring “outrageously” complicated, expensive and hard rules for companies to follow, a former senior SEC official said Wednesday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking to give companies a lot of new reporting requirements under the March proposal, said Meredith Cross, who served as director of the agency’s Division of Corporation Finance in the Obama administration. The proposal would require companies to report on their greenhouse gas emissions and make other disclosures about how climate change affects their businesses.

“A lot of people wrote in and said, ‘Start over,’” Cross, a Wilmer Cutler Pickering ...