The SEC announced today that it brought 671 enforcement actions in its fiscal year 2008 (ended Sept. 30, 2008), the second-highest number of enforcement actions in agency history. It also announced that for the second year in a row, it returned more than $1 billion to harmed investors through Fair Fund distributions.
I discuss in detail some of the SEC’s highlights for 2008 in this post on my Enforcement Action blog over at Compliance Week, and also ponder the unanswerable question: Is a high number of enforcement actions a good thing or bad thing?