The US Securities and Exchange Commission has recently announced that, based on its preliminary results, it filed 200 total enforcement actions in the first quarter of fiscal year 2025, which ran from October through December 2024, including “118 standalone enforcement actions.”
The Division filed a total of “75 enforcement actions” in October 2024 alone.
The foregoing numbers represent the most actions “filed in their respective periods since at least 2000.”
The actions filed in the first quarter addressed a wide range of violations, including “financial misstatements, misleading disclosures to brokerage customers, failures by advisory firms to disclose conflicts of interest, alleged bribery schemes, frauds targeting retail investors, misleading statements about artificial intelligence, and more.”
SEC Chair Gary Gensler remarked:
“Investors and issuers alike benefit from the Commission’s efforts to hold wrongdoers accountable. I’m proud of the incredible work of the Division of Enforcement and colleagues around the agency to track down misconduct and protect the investing public.”
Sanjay Wadhwa, Acting Director of the Division of Enforcement said:
“As these impressive figures reflect, the Division has not taken its foot off the pedal in the new fiscal year. On the contrary, the hard work of the dedicated staff in the Division, with assistance from throughout the Agency, has resulted in the busiest start to a fiscal year that I have witnessed in my 20-plus years at the Commission, providing invaluable protections to investors and promoting fairness and integrity in the securities markets.”
The SEC also continued its emphasis on “crediting parties that self-police, self-report, remediate, and otherwise cooperate with the Division’s investigations.”
The SEC revealed that it filed “more than 40 enforcement actions from Jan. 1, 2025, though Jan. 17, 2025, indicating that the Division’s high level of productivity continues into the second quarter of fiscal year 2025.”
The figures referenced here are reportedly “based on preliminary data that will be finalized at the agency’s fiscal year-end.”
