Dive Brief:
- A partner at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher and former official at the Securities and Exchange Commission will return to the agency next month to lead its enforcement division, the SEC said Wednesday.
- David Woodcock, chair of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher’s securities enforcement practice group, will take the post on May 4 following the resignation last month of Margaret “Meg” Ryan. Until that time, Sam Waldon will continue to serve as acting director of the enforcement division, the SEC said.
- “I am incredibly pleased to have David rejoin the SEC at this critical time, as we continue to focus on the types of misconduct that inflict the greatest harm to investors,” SEC Chair Paul Atkins said in a statement.
Dive Insight:
Woodcock in a 2023 opinion article criticized the approach to securities law by former SEC Chair Gary Gensler as “regulation by enforcement.”
“This brash approach is just one piece of an aggressive and expansive regulatory mindset that is keeping those regulated by the commission on high alert,” Woodcock said.
“Because at the same time that it is pushing the boundaries of enforcement, the SEC is also engaging in a historic amount of actual rulemaking by rulemaking — and at a blistering pace,” Woodcock wrote.
Woodcock’s view aligns with criticism by Atkins of SEC enforcement under Gensler.
“Over the past year, the commission has put a stop to regulation by enforcement and re-centered its enforcement program on the commission’s core mission by prioritizing cases that provide meaningful investor protection and strengthen market integrity,” Atkins said in a statement Tuesday.
“We have redirected resources toward the types of misconduct that inflict the greatest harm — particularly fraud, market manipulation, and abuses of trust — and away from approaches that prioritized volume and record-setting penalties over true investor protection,” Atkins said.
During fiscal year 2025, SEC fines and investor relief doubled to $17.9 billion, made up of $7.2 billion in civil penalties and $10.8 billion in disgorgement of ill-gotten gains, the SEC said.
The aggressive enforcement approach by the Biden administration accounted for much of the surge in fines, the SEC said.
Enforcement resources “have been misapplied in prior years to pursue media headlines and run up numbers, and in turn, led to misguided expectations on what constitutes effective enforcement,” the SEC said.
Under the new approach by Atkins, enforcement will focus on combating securities fraud, halting abusive trading in securities and “judiciously” overseeing crypto assets, the SEC said.
“A key part of this course correction is a renewed emphasis on holding individual wrongdoers accountable, which promotes stronger deterrence and better safeguards investors,” Atkins said.
The SEC filed 40% fewer accounting-related class action lawsuits last year compared with 2024, the lowest level of such suits in more than two decades, according to a report released last month by Cornerstone Research.
At the same time, the dollar value of accounting-related securities class action settlements hit a five-year high and comprised more than 50% of all settlements in 2025, Cornerstone said.
Woodcock in private practice has recently focused on regulatory enforcement, internal investigations and corporate governance, the SEC said.
Before joining Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, he served from 2020 until 2023 as assistant general counsel at ExxonMobil, according to his LinkedIn profile.
While leading the SEC’s Fort Worth regional office from 2011 until 2015, Woodcock “oversaw investigations in nearly every major area of the SEC’s enforcement program” and served as a member of the agency’s enforcement advisory committee, the SEC said.
Woodcock also created and led the financial reporting and audit task force aimed at the detection and prosecution of accounting violations and instances of false financial statements, the agency said.
