Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White has announced that she intends to leave at the end of the Obama Administration, after nearly four years as the agency’s head.
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White, who became the 31st chair of the SEC in April 2013, will be one of the SEC’s longest serving chairs.
In addition to completing the vast majority of the agency’s mandates under the Dodd-Frank Act and all of its mandates under the JOBS Act, the SEC says White’s leadership advanced the agency’s mission through other critical rulemakings–related to asset management regulation, equity market structure and disclosure effectiveness, says White in a release.
As part of her annoucement, White stresses in a release that the SEC should remain independent from the government. She says, “That independence is crucial to [the SEC’s] ability to protect investors, safeguard our markets and facilitate the capital formation that fosters innovation and growth that is essential to our national economy.”
SEC over the last four years
Under White’s leadership, the Commission advanced more than 50 rulemaking initiatives. She worked on:
- fundamental reforms to the money market fund industry, and new disclosures and protections for mutual fund investors;
- enhanced equity market structure oversight, including new controls on how key market participants handle technology and systems issues;
- a framework for enhancing the effectiveness of corporate disclosure for investors;
- new safeguards for the financial system and for investors in the more than $7 trillion security-based swap market;
- new ways for smaller companies to raise capital needed to grow their businesses;
- new post-crisis restrictions on proprietary trading and investments by broker-dealers and other financial institutions through the Volcker rule;
- enhancements to transparency and risk management for asset-backed securities;
- operating standards for the clearing agencies that stand at the center of our financial system;
- reforms to the regulation of credit rating agencies and how they address conflicts of interest that can harm investors;
- the first-ever regulatory framework for municipal advisors who are critical to the capital raising activities of thousands of local governments; and
- modernized rules of practice for conducting administrative proceedings, including providing expanded rights of discovery.
Further, White implemented the Commission’s first-ever policy to require admissions of wrongdoing in certain cases where heightened accountability and acceptance of responsibility is appropriate. Since then, the Commission has required admissions from more than 70 defendants, including 44 entities and 29 individuals.
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During White’s tenure, the Commission brought more than 2,850 enforcement actions, more than any other three-year period in the Commission’s history, and obtained judgments and orders totaling more than $13.4 billion in monetary sanctions. The Commission harged over 3,300 companies and over 2,700 individuals, including CEOs, CFOs, and other senior corporate officers.
And, as a result of the whistleblower program, the Commission has awarded more than $100 million to whistleblowers who have provided key original information that led to successful enforcement actions.
Read: SEC issues third-highest whistleblower award
Prior to her arrival at the Commission, White spent decades as a federal prosecutor and securities lawyer. She also served as an assistant U.S. attorney and was chief appellate attorney of that office’s Criminal Division. In private practice, she was a litigation partner and chair of the litigation department of Debevoise & Plimpton LLP.