Atkins-Led SEC Expected to Rein in Securities Enforcement

Pillsbury partner David Oliwenstein, who was formerly with the SEC’s Division of Enforcement and now leads the firm’s Securities Enforcement practice, told Law360 that he expected Atkins to continue the outgoing chair's agenda of reining in the Division of Enforcement, but that "there are reasons to believe he might take it a touch further in certain respects."

For example, outgoing chair Mark Uyeda and commissioner Hester Peirce, who will serve on the Commission with Chair Atkins, have already voted to withdraw a 15-year-old policy that allowed the director of enforcement to issue subpoenas, instead requiring staff to appear before the commissioners to formally open an investigation.

Oliwenstein also said the activities of enforcement staff could be subject to even further scrutiny under Atkins, who wrote a paper in 2008 for the Fordham Journal of Corporate & Financial Law that called for commissioners to more closely review settlements brought before them for approval, among other things.

“To the extent that the commission is going to substantively scrutinize settled enforcement actions, I think that there's a potential to see a meaningful drop in cases from the Atkins SEC," he said.