SEC Enforcement Division Director Gurbir S. Grewal will depart the company later this month. Division Deputy Director Sanjay Wadhwa will step in to function appearing enforcement director.
Chair Gary Gensler appointed Grewal as enforcement director in June 2021 (he was additionally named as one among WealthManagement.com Ten To Watch in 2022). Throughout his tenure, the enforcement division has licensed greater than 2,400 “enforcement issues,” leading to greater than $20 billion in disgorgement and penalties. Grewal is leaving the SEC to affix a personal observe, in accordance with Reuters.
In a press release on his departure, which can happen on Oct. 11, SEC Chair Gary Gensler mentioned the fee was “extremely lucky” Grewal opted to affix the company.
“Day-after-day, he has considered tips on how to finest defend buyers and assist guarantee market individuals adjust to our time-tested securities legal guidelines,” Gensler mentioned. “He has led a division that has acted with out concern or favor, following the information and the legislation wherever they might lead.”
Grewal touted the employees on the enforcement division, saying they’d performed every little thing to guard buyers regardless of dealing with “many challenges during the last three-plus years.”
“Their experience, professionalism, and dedication are certainly, unparalleled, and it has been the privilege of a lifetime to have been in a position to name them colleagues,” he mentioned.
Grewal was Gensler’s second alternative for the place after his first choose, Alex Oh, resigned a number of days after taking the job when a federal decide questioned her conduct on a case in her non-public observe profession.
Earlier than becoming a member of the fee, Grewal served as New Jersey Lawyer Basic, a place he’d held since 2018. He’d additionally been the Bergen County Prosecutor and was an Assistant U.S. Lawyer in New Jersey (the place he was chief of the Financial Crimes Unit), in addition to an Assistant U.S. Lawyer in New York’s Jap District.
The fee highlighted Grewal’s management in bringing greater than 100 actions “addressing widespread noncompliance” within the crypto house. Underneath Grewal, the SEC additionally introduced its first enforcement actions associated to Regulation Finest Curiosity violations and the primary prices associated to the up to date advertising and marketing rule in August and September 2023.
Underneath Grewal, the fee prioritized recordkeeping necessities, significantly relating to off-channel communications, resembling textual content messaging and WhatsApp.
In September 2022, the fee fined a few of the largest companies within the business greater than $1.1 billion to settle prices of “widespread and longstanding failures” from companies overseeing reps’ enterprise comms on WhatsApp and different off-channel platforms (the defendants included Financial institution of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and UBS).
The division has introduced quite a few associated actions within the years since; this previous August, greater than two dozen companies (together with Raymond James and LPL) agreed to pay greater than $392 million in penalties to settle comparable prices.
Grewal’s appearing substitute, Sanjay Wadhwa, joined the enforcement division as a employees lawyer in 2003. Sam Waldon will take over from Wadhwa as appearing deputy director for the division; he’s at present the Enforcement Division’s chief counsel.