Bruce Carton

SEC Chair White has reportedly been asked by both the Clinton and Trump campaigns if she will consider staying on until her successor is in place. Congress’ failure to act on two existing commissioner vacancies on the five-person SEC has further raised the stakes on this decision.

The SEC has named John W. Berry as Associate Regional Director for Enforcement in its Los Angeles Regional Office, filling the senior position formerly held by C. Dabney O’Riordan.

Apparently, you can only express your “disappointment” in someone so many times before you need to go to Plan B—take it up with the boss. Bruce Carton explores Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s request of President Obama to replace SEC Chair Mary Jo White.

The SEC’s Melissa Hodgman has been named as an Associate Director in the Division of Enforcement, filling a key senior position left vacant when Stephen L. Cohen departed the agency in June 2016.

In 2008, Bruce Carton wrote about the saga of Jérôme Kerviel—a comic book that told the story of the then-31-year old junior trader who nearly brought down French bank, Société Générale, with his rogue trading. In light of more Kerviel-related events since 2008, is a sequel in order?

Yesterday, the SEC named Jane Norberg as the new Chief of the SEC’s Office of the Whistleblower. Norberg, previously the Acting Chief, fills the position left vacant when Sean McKessy left the agency this summer.

Bruce Carton asks: Does anyone remember waaaaaaaaaaaay back in October 2015 when President Obama nominated Lisa Fairfax and Hester Peirce as SEC Commissioners? Please take a CW poll on when these nominees will be confirmed.

The SEC has prevailed in a jury trial against the City of Miami (which it labeled “a recidivist violator of the federal securities laws”) and Michael Boudreaux, the city’s former budget director. Bruce Carton has more enforcement hits and misses.

When President Obama introduced Mary Jo White to be his pick to be the new SEC Chair, he famously warned that “You don’t want to mess with Mary Jo!” Everyone logically assumed that he was referring to would-be securities fraudsters not wanting to mess with Mary Jo, but perhaps he was also referring to Major League Baseball hitters, as well?

When the Dodd-Frank whistleblower provisions were passed in 2010, some plaintiffs’ lawyers believed that a lucrative new whistleblower practice area might be brewing. One law firm even created an ad seeking whistleblowers that ran as a movie preview in Manhattan theaters. Six years later, this marketing seems to seems to have paid off.