The SEC announced on Friday that Vincente L. Martinez, Chief of the SEC’s Office of Market Intelligence, is leaving the agency next month. Martinez has led OMI since 2013, when he returned to the SEC to succeed Thomas A. Sporkin as Chief of OMI. The SEC stated that Victor J. Valdez will serve as Acting Chief of OMI following Martinez’s departure.
Established in 2010, OMI has become a critical part of the SEC’s Enforcement Division. OMI is responsible for overseeing the SEC’s collection, evaluation, and dissemination of the flood of tips, complaints and referrals (TCR) that come into the agency. OMI was created in the aftermath of the Bernard Madoff scandal, following a report by the SEC’s Inspector General that found that the enforcement staff lacked adequate guidance on how to analyze complaints appropriately. Roughly one-third of the IG’s 21 recommendations in that report pertained directly to improvements needed in the TCR handling system.
