The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) director of the division of enforcement, Gurbir Grewal, is stepping down on 11 October after three years in the role.
Sanjay Wadhwa, the division’s deputy director, will serve as acting director, and Sam Waldon, the division’s chief counsel, will serve as acting deputy director.
SEC chair Gary Gensler said: “Every day, he has thought about how to best protect investors and help ensure market participants comply with our time-tested securities laws. He has led a division that has acted without fear or favour, following the facts and the law wherever they may lead.”
Grewal said: “From recalibrating penalties and remedies to confronting emerging risks to holding issuers, insiders, and gatekeepers accountable, I am incredibly proud of all that we’ve accomplished as a division during my tenure.”
Before joining the SEC, Grewal was the attorney general for the state of New Jersey from 2018 to 2021. Prior to that, he served as the Bergen County Prosecutor, the chief law enforcement officer for New Jersey’s most populous county.
This year alone, Grewal worked to fine 12 firms over electronic communication recordkeeping failures; in August, twenty six broker-dealers, investment advisers, and dually-registered broker-dealers and investment advisers were fined a combined US$392.75 million by the SEC over widespread recordkeeping violations; and the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) paid a US$10 million penalty to settle charges that it caused nine wholly-owned subsidiaries to fail to inform the SEC of a cyber intrusion in 2021.
