The SEC brought at least 91 new enforcement suits from Inauguration Day through the end of September, down from 126 actions filed during the same period in 2024, according to Bloomberg Law’s review of agency litigation releases and filings.
The overall drop comes as Atkins’ enforcers focus more on individual offenders than household name companies.
“The types of entities that have been under scrutiny in the Atkins administration have been SEC registrants, registered investment advisers, and broker-dealers,” said Haima Marlier, a partner at Morrison & Foerster LLP and former senior trial counsel at the SEC.
Nearly 33% of enforcement actions brought under this administration so far have focused on offering fraud or insider trading, up from 26% during the same period last year.
“People perceive the Gensler administration as having gone into a lot of areas that were not real fraud, like the off-channel communications cases that were a huge dollar generator,” Peavler said, referring to a crackdown on Wall Street’s use of unofficial communications tools such as WhatsApp.
“If you look back at the cases brought over this fiscal year, there are cases that involve digital assets, but they also involve that bread-and-butter fraud, which often leads to the agency not needing to make a determination as to whether the asset itself is a security,” Marlier said.
Source: SEC Zeroes in on Insider Trading and Offering Fraud Under Atkins