Dive Brief:
- The Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division director Margaret A. Ryan has resigned, the SEC said in a Monday press release, which did not provide a reason for her departure.
- The move comes a little over six months after Ryan was appointed by SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins to the post. In a statement in the release, Atkins said Ryan had served with honor and distinction and that, “under her leadership, the division reprioritized enforcing the nation’s securities laws, with a focus on pursuing fraud.”
- The SEC named Principal Deputy Director Sam Waldon to serve as acting director of the division starting Monday and said it expects to appoint a permanent successor to Ryan within weeks.
Dive Insight:
Ryan’s sudden resignation raises new questions around whether the agency’s enforcement actions will accelerate or continue to decline during President Donald Trump’s second term in office. Accounting and auditing enforcement actions initiated by the SEC in 2025 touched a nine-year low in 2025, dropping to 10 from 31 in 2024, according to Cornerstone Research, an economic and financial consulting company.
An SEC spokesperson declined to respond to questions on why Ryan left and where she is headed.
In the enforcement director role, which sets the strategic tone for the agency’s consequential division, Ryan in her brief tenure brought “sharper messaging around transparency, fairness, accountability and principled enforcement,” Jasmine Sorrentino, a litigation partner at the law firm of Holland & Knight, wrote in a LinkedIn post.
“This will likely affect enforcement priorities, recalibrate settlement positions, and shift the tone of the division,” Sorrentino said in the post regarding Ryan’s departure. “Now is the time to stress-test open investigations and ongoing litigations.”
In contrast, Jerome Tomas, a partner in the law firm Baker McKenzie’s dispute resolution practice, doesn’t believe Ryan’s departure signals any impending change in the SEC’s enforcement policy, especially as several deputy directors of the enforcement division hired during her tenure will remain.
“Sure, the Director of Enforcement has a large role in shaping enforcement policy, but what is clear is that Enforcement takes its cues from the Commission as a whole,” Tomas wrote in a comment emailed to CFO Dive. “Change around the margins? Maybe. But that’s about all I’m expecting.”
Ryan in a statement in the release made clear that she had not sought out the SEC job. “Rather, this role found me. And for that, I am grateful,” Ryan said.
A Notre Dame University Law School-educated lawyer and former Marine and military judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, Ryan in a speech last month said that a “course correction” in the division’s operations was warranted. She also expressed her commitment to the mission of enforcing securities laws and protecting investors.
“...Reports that enforcement work at the SEC has been tossed to the wayside are not only greatly exaggerated but flat out wrong,” she stated according to a copy of the Feb. 11 speech before the Los Angeles County Bar Association last month. “But I will say that I am far more concerned with the quality and impact of the enforcement actions that we bring than with chasing numbers.”
Also on Tuesday, the SEC spokesperson declined to comment on a Wall Street Journal report alleging the SEC is preparing a proposal to eliminate the requirement to report earnings quarterly. The report cited unnamed “people familiar with the matter.”
