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The SEC has restored the authority of senior Division of Enforcement officials to initiate investigations without requiring approval by the SEC. This authority was originally established in 2009, but later revoked in 2017. On February 9, then-acting SEC Chair Allison Herren Lee reestablished senior enforcement staff’s ability to issue subpoenas and take sworn testimony sua sponte. This approach will likely decentralize and accelerate the approval process for investigations and enhance the Enforcement Division’s investigative autonomy.
Days later, the SEC also reversed course as to its procedure for waiving automatic disqualifications that the federal securities laws and regulations impose on so-called bad actors. On February 11, Lee announced that a settling party may no longer request joint consideration of enforcement action settlement offers with waiver requests. This reinstitutes a bifurcated process to consider offers of settlement separately from waiver requests. The announcement is a reversal of a procedure that then-SEC Chair Jay Clayton announced in July 2019. See “SEC Now May Consider a Simultaneous Settlement Offer and Waiver Request,”