SEC Chief of Staff Identifies Areas of Heightened Attention

One question that potential SEC whistleblowers often wonder
about is whether the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
will be interested in the information that they have
uncovered.

Two days ago, SEC Chief of Staff Andrew J. Donohue gave a
keynote address at the InvestoRegulation Conference in London,
England, in which he listed some areas that the SEC is
interested in.  According to Mr. Donohue, the SEC is presently
focusing “heightened attention on gatekeepers, financial
reporting and issuer disclosure, asset management, and market
structure issues.” (Speech, p. 8.)

Mr. Donohue’s keynote address follows on the heels of recent
testimony by SEC Chair Mary Jo White in which, like Mr.
Donohue, she identified financial reporting and issuer
disclosure as areas that the SEC is focusing on.  Ms. White
also listed the following additional areas of interest during
her testimony:

• Investment management
• High frequency trading
• The operation of trading platforms such as dark pools
• Manipulative trading
• Misusing confidential customer trading information
• Market access
• Technology controls, and
• Net capital violations

In prior posts, I have discussed other kinds of frauds and
violations that the SEC investigates, including:

• Accounting frauds
• Books and Records violations
• Financial Statement frauds
• Initial Public Offering frauds (IPOs)
• FCPA violations (bribery or improper payments made to
  foreign officials)
• Money Laundering
• Violation of anti-money laundering laws and rules
• Deceptive practices in buying or selling stocks
• Municipal Securities frauds
• and more

You can read those posts by clicking
here
and
here.

Potential SEC whistleblowers might also be interested to know
that during her testimony Ms. White praised the SEC
Whistleblower Award Program as having had a “transformative
impact” on SEC enforcement.  I covered Ms. White’s testimony
in more detail in posts on
June 22
and
June 15.

Ms. White’s testimony about the value of SEC whistleblowers
seems to comport with a study conducted by the Social Science
Research Network (SSRN).  Among other things, the study found
that from 1978 – 2012, “we estimate whistleblowers enabled
regulators to successfully obtain additional judgments of
$20.75 to $21.27 billion more than would have been obtained
without their assistance.”  You can find out more about the
SSRN study by clicking
here.

* * *

About the Pickholz Law Offices LLC

The Pickholz Law Offices LLC is a law firm that focuses on
representing clients involved with investigations conducted by
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, FINRA, and other
securities regulators.

The Pickholz Law Offices has represented employees, officers,
and others in SEC whistleblower cases involving financial
institutions and public companies listed in the Fortune Top
10, Top 20, Top 50, Top 100, Top 500, and the Forbes Global
2000. We were the first law firm ever to win an SEC
whistleblower award for a client on appeal to the full
Commission in Washington. Inside Counsel magazine named this
achievement one of the five key events of the SEC
whistleblower program. Examples of the
Firm’s SEC whistleblower cases are available here.

In addition to representing SEC whistleblowers, since 1995 the
Firm’s founder, Jason R. Pickholz, has also represented many
clients in securities enforcement investigations conducted by
the SEC, FINRA, the U.S. Department of Justice and US
Attorney’s Offices, State authorities, and more. Examples of
some of the many
securities enforcement cases that Mr. Pickholz has been
involved with are available here.

You can see what actual clients have had to say about The
Pickholz Law Offices by going to the
Client Reviews page on our website or by clicking here.

How to Contact the Pickholz Law Offices LLC

If you would like to speak with a securities lawyer or SEC
whistleblower attorney, please feel free to call Jason R.
Pickholz at 347-746-1222.

The Pickholz Law Offices remains open and will be fully
operational through teleworking while we all grapple with this
terrible pandemic. We hope that all of our clients,
colleagues, friends, and their families remain safe and
healthy. Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone who has
been affected by COVID-19.