In brief
The last thirty days in September, the end of the US federal government’s fiscal year, is generally an important time to analyze enforcement activity by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) and the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”).
Because all enforcement cases must be reviewed and approved by the SEC and CFTC Commissioners, the end of the fiscal year often poses a logjam in processing enforcement recommendations. As a result, enforcement staff and leaders at the SEC and the CFTC must prioritize enforcement recommendations that they want to have approved by the Commissioners before the end of the fiscal year. Thus, in our experience, enforcement cases filed at the end of the fiscal year (and for the SEC, particularly ones accompanied by a press release as opposed to a typical administrative or litigation release), are strong indicators of issues currently in the regulators’ crosshairs and set the tone for enforcement hotspots and priorities for the next fiscal year.
In this short video, Baker McKenzie Partner Peter Chan, a former SEC Assistant Director of Enforcement, provides his “inside baseball” insights regarding the importance of the timing of some of these enforcement actions.
Click here to read the full alert.
Author
Peter Chan
Peter K.M. Chan is a member of Baker McKenzie’s North American Financial Regulation and Enforcement Practice, which provides our clients with a full range of regulatory advice and enforcement counseling.
Peter brings two decades of experience at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to his litigation and counseling work. His tenure at the SEC, as well as a stint as Special Assistant US Attorney in the Northern District of Illinois, have given Peter experience with civil and criminal matters. At the SEC, Peter served as assistant regional director in the Chicago regional office, where he led investigations and litigations of high-profile enforcement cases. In the course of his SEC career, he handled corporate issuer disclosure and reporting violations, financial fraud, auditor independence violations, insider trading, broker-dealer misconduct and failure to supervise cases, hedge fund and investment company fraud, and Dodd-Frank and Sarbanes-Oxley violations. As the head of the Municipal Securities and Public Pensions Unit at the SEC's Chicago office, he oversaw cases involving municipalities and public pensions throughout the Midwest, including disclosure failures by states, cities, and underwriters in municipal bond offerings; pay-to-play and public corruption; and securities fraud victimizing municipalities and public pensions.
Peter also served in national leadership roles within the SEC's Enforcement Division. Peter acted as national leader of the Municipalities Continuing Disclosure Cooperation (MCDC) Initiative. He also served as co-chair of the Priorities and Resources Subcommittee of the Division of Enforcement Advisory Committee and was one of the original architects of the SEC Financial Reporting and Audit Task Force.
Peter's experience in criminal securities fraud cases includes serving as Special Assistant US Attorney in the Northern District of Illinois in a criminal investigation into market abuse by a Chicago broker-dealer, resulting in guilty pleas by several senior executives at the firm.
In 2014, Peter received the SEC's prestigious Paul R. Carey Award for his [e]xceptional personal commitment and effectiveness as a member of the Division of Enforcement.
