Liban Jama, senior advisor to SEC Chair Mary Jo White, will succeed Dignam in Atlanta.
The SEC reports that Rhea Kemble Dignam, currently director of the SEC’s Atlanta regional office (ARO), has been named senior counsel to the director of the SEC’s Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE).
Dignam, who joined the SEC as the Atlanta regional office director in March 2010, will assume her new post when Liban Jama, her successor in Atlanta, begins in that position later this fall, according to an SEC statement.
Currently, Jama is a senior advisor to SEC Chair Mary Jo White. Previously, he served as counsel to SEC Commissioner Luis Aguilar, and, from 2005 to 2011, he served as senior counsel in the enforcement division.
Rhea Kemble Dignam, senior counsel to the director of the SEC’s OCIE.
Jama’s “consensus-building expertise and sound judgment have been instrumental in the adoption of a number of significant rules, including rules involving cross-border security-based swaps, financial responsibility rules for broker-dealers, and the registration of municipal advisors,” SEC Chair White says in the statement.
Prior to joining the SEC, Dignam was a principal with Ernst & Young LLP, a vice president and deputy general counsel at New York Life Insurance Company, executive deputy comptroller of New York City, chief assistant district attorney in Kings County (Brooklyn), New York, and served in several posts at the U.S. Attorney’s office for the southern district of New York, including as the executive assistant U.S. attorney, chief of the public corruption unit, chief of the narcotics unit and a member of the securities and commodities frauds unit, according to the SEC.
In her new post, Dignam will “focus on communicating examination findings to key stakeholders inside and outside the SEC in furtherance of OCIE’s mission to promote compliance, prevent fraud, inform policy, and identify risks,” according to the SEC.
As ARO regional director, Dignam “has been a significant contributor to the SEC’s enforcement program,” Andrew J. Ceresney, director of the enforcement division, says in the SEC’s statement. “Under her leadership, the ARO has brought many cases of national significance,” including the following, which were spotlighted in the statement:
- “In re Alderman et al. (action against the former members of the board of directors of various Regions Morgan Keegan bond funds, for their failure, among other things, to fulfill their valuation obligations as board members under the Investment Company Act of 1940 with respect to fair valued securities);
- “In re Morgan Keegan et al. (action against the broker-dealer, the investment advisor, and two individuals, brought in parallel with actions filed by a task force of state regulators and by FINRA, with a resulting aggregate settlement of $200 million in disgorgement and penalties);
- “The series of cases (including SEC v. Lee Farkas) against multiple individuals responsible for the more than $1.5 billion fraud at Colonial Bank;
- “SEC v. Bank of America, charging violations in connection with a particular RMBS [residential mortgage backed security] offering in 2008, and resolved as part of a major global settlement announced in conjunction with the Department of Justice in which the bank would pay a total of $16.65 billion to resolve various investigations brought by DOJ and other federal and state agencies, including the SEC. (The settlement is subject to court approval.)
- “In re Bank of America Corporation, charging violations in connection with inadequate disclosures in the bank’s Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) about uncertainties regarding the potential financial impact of its mortgage loan repurchase obligations. The bank admitted its disclosure failures and agreed to pay a $20 million penalty.
- “Two ‘standalone’ actions (SEC v. McCarthy and SEC v. Cleary, against the former CEO and CFO, respectively, of Beazer Homes) brought under Sarbanes-Oxley Section 304 seeking clawbacks for accounting restatements;
- “In re JP Turner, a settled action charging failure to supervise by both the firm and its president and the companion litigated case of In re Bresner et al, against the firm’s executive vice president and three of its former registered representatives. (The administrative law judge found all four had violated the securities laws; the three registered representatives are appealing to the full Commission.);
- “SEC v. Morgan Keegan, in which the Commission prevailed in a trial relating to misconduct in connection with auction rate securities.”
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