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It is my pleasure to transmit to you the Annual Report of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission for the fiscal year ended September 30, 1980. This is the fourth Annual Report which I have been privileged to transmit to the Congress on behalf of the Commission. As has been my practice, I would like to review some of the important challenges which the Commission has met, as well as some of the additional initiatives which we have undertaken, during the past year. Each of these matters should be viewed as illustrative of our on-going efforts to continue to merit the reputation for excellence in public service which this Agency has earned over nearly half-a-century.

When this Annual Report is published, I will have served as Chairman of the Commission for close to four years—longer than all but two of my 20 predecessors. A tenure of this length has provided me with a perspective on the work of the Commission which may, perhaps, not be available to one serving a shorter time in this office. It has also convinced me of the validity of my view that a long-term commitment to service is essential if a Chairman is to have a significant impact on the shape and character of the Commission and its work. Until this time, the average tenure of Commission Chairmen has been two years and two months. I hope that my term will mark the beginning of a new tradition of long-term commitment by the chief executive officer of the Commission.

Such a commitment from the Chairman of the Commission is important for a number of reasons. At the practical level, many issues which face the Commission are so complex or difficult that their resolution inevitably involves a multi-year process. A Chairman measuring his tenure in months, rather than years, might be reluctant to take on a major task with no expectation that he would have time to conclude it. Or, if he did address such a question, he might be tempted to seek an expedient answer which would produce more immediate results, but prove unsatisfactory over the long term. In my experience, such issues as achieving the integration of the disclosure systems of the Securities Act of 1933 and the

of selfregulation for the accounting profession, are among those matters which could not successfully have been addressed in a compressed time frame. More subtly, it is impossible for a Chairman who remains in office only a relatively brief time to develop a complete sense of the sophisticated scheme of Federal

Exchange Act of 1934, or helping to foster a meaningfuland effective system se

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DEPOSITED BY THE

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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