Baseball fans and legal practitioners alike gathered on June 17 to hear co-director George Canellos of the SEC Enforcement Division lay out some ambitious plans for the agency.
Asked about the SEC’s new lineup, Canellos gave fellow co-director Andrew Ceresney and newly appointed Chair Mary Jo White his vote of confidence, noting that they were well-equipped to lead the Division through its most successful season yet.
Canellos then talked strategy, noting the following team goals: developing a uniform standard for determining whether to bring an enforcement action; encouraging early and substantive dialogue between SEC staff and defense counsel; continuing the SEC’s renewed focus on accounting fraud and financial disclosure cases; increasing the SEC’s use of deferred prosecution agreements; improving agency efficiency through risk-based initiatives and merging offices; and using wiretaps and the STOCK Act to bring insider trading cases. Canellos concluded the conference by hyping one of the Division’s rising stars – the Asset Management Unit – for its successful work handling ’40 Act cases.