News & Events

Partner Michael Osnato was quoted extensively in Law.com’s weekly Compliance Hot Spots newsletter discussing SEC Chair Gary Gensler’s first year at the agency, as well as the state of the agency’s enforcement efforts. Michael noted how, at the beginning of Mr. Gensler’s tenure, “a lot of us felt and saw an uptick in enforcement activity across a whole range of areas,” and sensed “that it was the beginning of a really sustained wave of robust enforcement.” He explained that the most notable change has been “that the wave of rulemaking efforts have taken a little bit of the focus and energy away from enforcement. The investigations are still being pursued, but it feels like some of the bandwidth, at least from the chair and the commission-level perspective, has been redirected into rulemaking.” Michael added that “generally there has been a view that the agency can achieve a lot of regulatory goals through enforcement,” pointing specifically to recent priorities like crypto or climate, but further noted that “Because the cases are often very different and fact-specific, and can frankly take too long, sometimes the natural pivot is to rulemaking, which many might view as being more effective or efficient, at least in the short term.”

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