Rhea Dignam Named as Senior Counsel To OCIE Director
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Rhea Kemble Dignam has been named as senior counsel to the director of the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE). Ms. Dignam will begin her new position when her successor as the regional director of the SEC’s Atlanta Regional Office begins in that position later this fall. Ms. Dignam joined the SEC as the Atlanta Regional Office director in March 2010. “Rhea is a proven and valued member of the Commission and the National Exam Program,” said Andrew J. Bowden, OCIE director. “I am delighted that she has agreed to serve…
Read MoreSEC Announces Arrival of New Administrative Law Judge
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced that Jason S. Patil begins work at the agency this week as an Administrative Law Judge. Earlier this summer, the SEC announced the hiring of Administrative Law Judge James E. Grimes and three law clerks who along with Mr. Patil nearly double the staff of the Office of Administrative Law Judges, which received more than 200 assignments to conduct public hearings and issued 34 Initial Decisions in fiscal year 2013. Mr. Patil assumes his new role on September 22. He began his legal career at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked…
Read MoreWells Fargo Advisors Admits Failing to Maintain Controls and Producing Altered Document, Agrees to Pay $5 Million Penalty
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Wells Fargo Advisors LLC with failing to maintain adequate controls to prevent one of its employees from insider trading based on a customer’s nonpublic information. The SEC also charged Wells Fargo for unreasonably delaying its production of documents during the SEC’s investigation and providing an altered internal document related to a compliance review of the broker’s trading. Wells Fargo, which admits wrongdoing, has agreed to pay a $5 million penalty to settle the SEC’s charges, which are the first-ever against a broker-dealer for failing to protect a customer’s material nonpublic information. According to…
Read MoreSEC Announces Largest-Ever Whistleblower Award
The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced an expected award of more than $30 million to a whistleblower who provided key original information that led to a successful SEC enforcement action. The award will be the largest made by the SEC’s whistleblower program to date and the fourth award to a whistleblower living in a foreign country, demonstrating the program’s international reach. “This whistleblower came to us with information about an ongoing fraud that would have been very difficult to detect,” said Andrew Ceresney, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “This record-breaking award sends a strong message about our…
Read MoreSEC Charges New York-Based Private Equity Fund Adviser With Misallocation Of Portfolio Company Expenses
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged a New York-based investment advisory firm with breaching its fiduciary duty to a pair of private equity funds by sharing expenses between a company in one’s portfolio and a company in the other’s portfolio in a manner that improperly benefited one fund over the other. An SEC investigation found that while Lincolnshire Management integrated the two portfolio companies and managed them as one, the funds were separately advised and had distinct sets of investors. Despite developing an expense allocation policy as part of the integration, it was not followed on some occasions, resulting…
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