The Securities and Exchange Commission will be losing hundreds of staff members as the result of buyout and deferred resignation offers, AdvisorHub reports.
The report, citing people with direct knowledge of the matter, said the commission’s workforce would be reduced by about 500, approximately 10% of its 5,000 employees.
Last month, the SEC offered some employees $50,000 if they choose to resign or to retire under an early retirement program. To qualify for the buyout offer, employees must have been on the agency’s payroll before Jan. 24. They must voluntarily leave through resignation, transfer to another agency or immediate retirement. If they accept a voluntary separation agreement and return to the SEC within five years, they must pay back the incentive in full.
Of the 500 who are agreeing to leave the agency, some of the more significant departures are expected to come from the divisions of enforcement, exams and the office of the general counsel.
An SEC spokeswoman declined to comment on the departures, which come amid a review of the commission’s operations by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.
As part of the cost-cutting plan the SEC will be submitted to the Trump Administration, the commission recently fired the top directors at its10 regional offices around the nation. The commission has also sent an email to staff informing them of plans by the General Services Administration to terminate building leases for its regional offices in Los Angeles and Philadelphia.
Some experts have raised concerns about the impact of the staff departures on the SEC’s investigative and regulatory functions.
“The Trump administration may claim that all agencies should be reduced in size by a roughly similar margin, in effect sharing proportionate reductions,” Columbia Law School professors John Coates, John Coffee Jr., James Cox, Merritt Fox and Joel Seligman wrote in a March 13 blog post. “But this ignores one extraordinary fact about the SEC: It consistently has generated more in fees than in operating expenses.”
The attorneys at Lewitas Hyman include former senior attorneys at the SEC whose legal experience and industry knowledge make them uniquely qualified to provide counsel on securities regulatory, compliance and enforcement matters. Our attorneys fully understand the regulatory scrutiny financial professionals and their firms face from the various regulators that oversee the financial services industry. If your firm is facing an investigation from a regulatory agency, please contact Lewitas Hyman at (888) 655-6002 or through our online contact form.
