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This paper shows that the door between the SEC and the plaintiffs’ bar does not revolve. Among other things, I show that none of the ten leading plaintiffs’-side firms employ anyone with recent SEC experience doing plaintiffs’ side litigation; none of the enforcement attorneys I identified as working for the agency in 2015 left to […]
More than half the high-ranking SEC officials who left the agency since January 2016 landed at law and financial firms, with Debevoise & Plimpton LLP leading the pack. Debevoise, private equity manager Blackstone Group LP and other firms hired 15 of the 26 Securities and Exchange Commission officials Bloomberg BNA tracked since their departures were […]
Presidential candidate Martin O’Malley issued a 10-page manifesto Thursday promising tougher regulations on Wall Street to help prevent another financial crash, including instituting a “revolving door” ban at regulatory agencies as well as requiring the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement director to be a presidential nominee and doubling the agency’s budget. via Presidential Candidate O’Malley […]
The latest study on the “revolving door” finds that future career prospects motivate SEC enforcement lawyers to be more aggressive during their time at the SEC, not less. via Yet Another Study Debunks ‘Revolving Door’ Worries | Compliance Week
On January 3, 2014, the SEC announced that George S. Canellos, co-director of its Enforcement Division, would be leaving the agency that month but that he had “not yet made future career plans.” Today, Canellos’ post-government plans were revealed, as law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy announced that Canellos will be joining the firm in mid-March as Global Head […]
You would think that the noise surrounding the supposed “revolving door” problem would die down given (a) the lack of evidence to support it, and (b) the growing research refuting it, but it never really seems to subside. The latest proposals against this so-called scourge involve half-million dollar annual salaries for government workers and lifetime […]
Only three of the agency’s five commissioners voted on [JPMorgan] settlement, which included an acknowledgement of wrongdoing by the bank. SEC Chairman Mary Jo White and Republican Commissioner Daniel Gallagher were recused from the case given legal work their previous employers – Debevoise & Plimpton LLC and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP — […]
Despite wide-scale recent turnover in its senior leadership and in the Enforcement Division, the SEC says a broader look at movement among its most senior officers shows that departures have consistently been between 15% -18% in the past four fiscal years. via A Look at the Recent Turnover in the SEC’s Senior Leadership – Compliance […]
Truth be told, Khuzami was actually innovative at the SEC. He restructured the enforcement division, with a clearer focus on targets and a better use of its small resources. Those were the kinds of things that caught the private-sector’s eye — probably because he learned resource maximization and efficiency in the private sector to begin […]
… But there’s actually specific academic research on the question of how the revolving door impacts S.E.C. enforcement actions and it concludes that S.E.C. lawyers who rotate out into the private sector are more aggressive in their enforcement efforts than those who don’t. If you manage to unplug from the revolving door narrative for a […]