SEC Announces New Enforcement Initiatives

On July 2, 2013, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced three new enforcement initiatives: the Financial Reporting and Audit Task Force, the Microcap Fraud Task Force, and the Center for Risk and Quantitative Analytics. According to the SEC's announcement, these initiatives are an effort to "build on its Division of Enforcement's ongoing efforts to concentrate resources on high-risk areas of the market and bring cutting-edge technology and analytical capacity to bear in its investigations."

These new initiatives, along with recent press reports that the Enforcement Division would no longer settle certain cases without obtaining admissions of wrongdoing (for example, where misconduct harmed a large number of investors), are among the first steps taken by the SEC under the leadership of new Chairman Mary Jo White, who has pledged "to further strengthen the enforcement function of the SEC" in a way that is "bold and unrelenting."