Last week was a study in contrasts in how the Securities and Exchange Commission has been able to pursue cases from the financial crisis. The regulator has been successful in extracting large settlements from banks that were are the heart of the meltdown in the mortgage market, but it has not done as well in proving any significant wrongdoing by individuals.
That raises the issue of why the agency has been able to pursue the large institutions but does not bring cases against senior managers overseeing those companies for violations of the federal securities laws. The problem is that proving an individual broke the law is much more difficult because juries seem to find it much easier to put the blame on the organization while exonerating those who work there.
via Mixed Results for S.E.C. in Financial Crisis Cases – DealBook
