The Securities and Exchange Commission is seeking public comment for an upcoming roundtable about securities lending and short sale issues.

The roundtable is part of a broader effort by the SEC in recent months to address potentially abusive short-sales.

The Sept. 29 discussions will focus on securities lending issues, including current lending practices and participants; compensation arrangements and conflicts; the benefits and risks of securities lending; risks related to cash collateral reinvestment; improvements to transparency; and whether the securities lending regulatory regime can be improved for the benefit of investors.

The Sept. 30 panels will focus on pre-borrowing and possible additional short sale disclosures, such as whether investors would benefit from adding a short sale indicator to the tapes to which transactions are reported for exchange-listed securities; requiring public disclosure of individual large short positions and the potential impact of imposing a pre-borrow or enhanced "locate" requirement on short sellers, potentially on a pilot basis, as a way to curtail abusive "naked" short selling.

The event will be open to the public and held at SEC headquarters. The SEC will accept comments on the issues addressed in the roundtable discussion until Oct. 30, 2009.

Panelists will be announced later, but the SEC notice says participants are expected to include investors, corporate issuers, financial services firms, beneficial owner lenders, lending agents, borrowers of securities, self-regulatory organizations, international regulators, and the academic community.